
r 1-^ 



THE 



CATACOMBS 



ROME. 



.? v^\^ -; /-i^ 




|ljilabelp^m: 



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NO. 1122 CHESTNUT STREET. 

NEW YORK: 690 BTiOADWAY. 



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4S&* No hooks are published by the American Sunday-School Union 
toithout the sanctum of the Committee of Piiblication, consisting of four- 
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48 6555 

AUG -6 1942 



CONTENTS. 



v>- 



CHAPTER I. 

THE VATICAN AND LAPIDARIAN GALLERY. 

» 

extent of the Vatican — Its contents — Relics — Super- 
stition of Romanists — Meaning of the name Lapi- 
darian Gallery — Its size — Its contents — Tomb-stones 
of Christians and Pagans — How classified and ar- 
ranged — Whence obtained 11 

CHAPTER II. 

THE CATACOMBS OF EGYPT AND OF PARIS. 

Date of the Egyptian Catacombs — Why excavated — 
Embalming the dead — Where deposited — Meaning 
of the word Catacomb — Tombs of the kings — Num- 
ber and extent of these Catacombs — The Catacombs 
of Paris — Their origin — Their extent — When first 
used for burial — Why so used — Visit to them — In- 
scriptions — Quesnel — Subterranean refuge — Resem- 
blances to the Catacombs of Rome 22 

CHAPTER III. 

THE CATACOMBS OF ROME — THEIR ORIGIN. 

Tufa and Puzzolana — Building materials for Rome — 
Roman cement — The Esquiline Hill — Receptacle for 
1* 5 



CONTENTS. 



^ 



V 



the dead poor — Emperor Augustus gives it to Mae- 
cenas — Reclaimed by him — Other excavations — 
Their vast extent 38 

CHAPTER IV. 

THE EABLY CHRISTIANS IN ROME. 

Paul's Epistle to the Romans — Its date — Character of 
the Christians at Rome — Quotations from Paul's 
Epistles — Christians in Caesar's household — Paul at 
Rome — Peter, not the founder of the church at 
Rpme — How the Gospel was introduced to Rome — 
Roman Jews at the Pentecost — Roman Christians 
generally poor — Why — Practical lesson — The Sand- 
Diggers or Fossors — They would value the Gospel — 
Diogenes, the Fossor — Description of picture — Fos- 
sors poor — The scoffer Celsus — Anecdote of Lauren- 
tius — Martyrdom of St. Lawrence 47 

CHAPTER V. 

PERSECUTION OF THE CHRISTIANS IN ROME. 

Reasons why the Romans persecuted— Principal per- 
secutors — Duration of persecutions — Various modes 
of torture-^The Coliseum — Martyrdoms in the Co- 
liseum — Ignatius~^ew references to the persecu- 
tions in the Catacombs — Probable reason — Epitaphs 
of martyrs — Martyrdom by poison-^ate of inscrip- 
tions in the Catacombs — Testimony of Prudentius — 
Commemorative tablet — Deep pits for burial 68 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE CATACOMBS A REFUGE FROM PERSECUTION. 

Anecdote of Nero — Of Rienzi — Persecutions of the 
faithful before Christ-^Catacombs a convenient and 



CONTENTS. 



safe retreat for the Christians — Quotation from P^' 
dentins — Violent persecutions generally brief— Resi- 
dence in the Catacombs-Edicts of emperors con- 
cerning the Catacombs — Epitaph of the martyr J K^ 
Alexander— Explanation of picture — Perilous ad- 
venture in the Catacombs 95 

CHAPTER VII. 

THE CATACOMBS AS A PLACE OF WORSHIP. 

True Christians worship everywhere — Daniel — Paul 
and Silas — Edicts of Valerian and Gallienus; of 
Maximian and Constantine — Chapels in the Cata- 
. combs — Description of them — Impressive place for 
worship — Chapels enlarged and improved — The 
burial of Polycarp — Catacombs visited for medita- 
tion and prayer — Extract from Prudentius — Visitors 
increase — Love-feasts and the Eucharist celebrated 
there — Abuses of the custom 107 

CHAPTER VIII. 

THE CATACOMBS AS A CEMETERY FOR THE CHRISTIANS. 

Romans burned their dead — Cinerary urns — Colum- 
barise — Descriptive extract^fcjhristians buried their j 
dead— ReasonS-^Catacombs used for burials — Ro- / T**^ 
mans g^e up bodies of the martyrs — Ignatius' 4 
prayer4tNumber of Christians buried in the Cata- 
combs — Christian population of Rome — Names of 
particular Catacombs — Bisomum — Crypt — Quota- ' 
tion from Jerome — Explanation of Frontispiece — 
Meaning of Cemetery — Its Christian significance — 
Contrast with paganism — Pagan inscriptions — Christ 
brought Immortality to light — Extract from Pru- 
dentius 116 \ 



<^')vv.a^ 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER IX. 

QUOTATIONS FROM THE CATACOMBS. 

Symbols and emblems used by the Christians— The 
Monogram — The Dove — The Palm-branch — Various 
epitaphs — Heathen prayers for the dead — Lamps 
at heathen tombs — More inscriptions — *' Handmaid 
of God" — *' Travelling virgin" — Epitaphs of children 
— Catechumens — Neophytes — Dates of epitaphs — 
Pagan and Christian epitaphs on the same stone — 
No traces of the worship of the Virgin Mary 133 

CHAPTER X. 

PICTURES FROM THE CATACOMBS. 

Christian emblems — The Lamb — The Cock — Peter's 
Denial — A Ship — The Anchor — Emblems of the Re- 
surrection — Jonah — Noah and the Ark — Daniel — 
Daniel's three friends — Abraham offering Isaac — 
Emblem of the interposition of the Deity — Enig- 
mas and puns — Examples — The Fish or ICHTHUS 
— Double use of these symbols — Rude state of art — 
Explanation — The sentiment better than the repre- 
sentation 157 

CHAPTER XI. 

SUBSEQUENT HISTORY OF THE CATACOMBS. 

Constantino gives them to the church — Burials in 
them continued — How long — Frequently visited — 
Increase of the church — Decline of the empire — 
"Withers under God's righteous judgments — Its 
crimes — Instruments of its overthrow — Incursion of 
barbarians — Catacombs neglected by the Christians 



CONTENTS. 9 



— Resort of bandits — Entrances to them filled up 
and lost — Almost deserted for many centuries — 
When visited — By whom — For what purposes — Evi- 
dences left — Opened again in sixteenth century — 
What led to it — Explorers — Their labours — Their 
discoveries — The value of them — Why hidden so 
long 169 

CHAPTER XTI. 

PERVERSION OF THESE DISCOVERIES. 

Gross superstition — Multiplication of relics — ^Exam- 
ple, St. Evodia — The evil checked — Luther — An- 
other example — Bishop of Amiens — Relics wanted — 
Search in the Catacombs — Unopened grave found — 
St. Theodosia — Native of Amiens — Bones carried 
thither — Festival of St. Theodosia — Miracle wrought 
— Cardinal Wiseman's discourse 181 

CHAPTER XIII. 

PRESENT CONDITION OF THE CATACOMBS. 

The Campagna — Its former condition — Sunken places 
on its surface — Danger of passing over it — Quotation 
from a traveller — Entrance to Catacombs — The Ap- 
pian Way — Convent and church of St. Sebastian — 
St. Sebastian — His martyrdom — A guide to the 
Cata<;ombs — Description of a visit to them — Pious 
frauds — Pagans made into saints — Tests of saints 
and martyrs — Gross superstitions — A genuine tomb 
and epitaph — Valeria — Suppositions respecting her 
— Catacombs now empty and desolate — Quotation 
from a recent visitor — Interesting for what they 
were — Imaginary walk through them — Historical 
glance 194 



10 CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

CHARACTER OF THE EARLY CHRISTIANS IN ROME. 

They were from the humbler walks in life — Unam- 
bitious and unworldly — Piety degenerated as wealth 
increased — Oppressed and persecuted — Affecting 
evidences of it — Worth of religious liberty — Their 
meek endurance of wrong — Unrevengeful and un- 
complaining — Like their Divine Master — Their sim- 
plicity in character — In forms of worship — In mode 
of burial and epitaphs — Their chapels — Their wor- 
ship in the Catacombs — Primitive and modern Ro- 
man churches contrasted — Degeneracy of the latter 
— The truly good and great — God's judgments of 
them — Christianity is immortal — Will be universal 
— Best means of spreading it — Rome sinks and 
Christianity rises — Corruption of ancient heathen- 
ism — Pompeii — ^^The choice — The resurrection, a 
time of disappointment and terror to many — The 
people of God safe — The general assembly and 
church of the first-born 219 

APPENDIX. 
Extracts from Professor Silliman's Visit to Europe. ...243 



ipi^ Note. — The initial letter on page 11 is connected wilh 
an ancient vase, on the body of which is inscribed a sentenco 
only part cf which appears in the engraving. Tbe whole sen- 
tence translated is, "Vincent, drink and live !" 



THE CATACOMBS OF HOME. 



CHAPTER I. 



THE VATICAN AND THE LAPIDARIES GALLERY. 



IIE Vatican is the name of 
an irregular mass of build- 
ings at Rome, connected, at 
one extremity, with the mag- 
nificent cathedral of St. Pe- 
ter's. The name is derived 
from that of the hill on 
which it stands ; a name 
given to it by the old Ro- 
mans on account of the 
" vaticinations' ' or divina- 
tions of the Etruscan and 
Roman "vates" or sooth- 
sayers, who made it the 
place of their fraudulent 

juggleries, and hence it is called the Vatican 

Hill. 




•'^See p. 10. 



11 



12 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



The buildings have been erected at dif- 
ferent times, and in various styles of archi- 
tecture. They enclose more than twenty large 
courts, and contain, probably, about five 
thousand apartments. Some of the most 
ancient constitute the Papal Palace, which 
was for several centuries the constant resi- 
dence of the Pope, and is still his occasional 
residence and his official seat. In the cha- 
pels of the Papal Palace are some of the 
best productions of Michael Angelo and 
Raphael, the greatest names in modern art. 
The library, occupying another part of the 
Vatican, is one of the largest in the world, 
and is especially rich in the number of 
manuscripts written long before the art of 
printing was in use. The Museum, which 
is connected wdth the palace and the library 
by a corridor about a thousand feet long, is 
filled with sculptures gathered fi:om the ruins 
of a hundred ancient cities, or WTOUght by 
modern skill, and with paintings where the 
canvass seems to glow with life. To these 
t reasures of art, acquired by the expenditure 
of the vast wealth of the Roman hierarchy 
during several centuries, there is constantly 
directed from other countries a tide of pil- 



THE VATICAN. 13 



grims as zealous in their admiration of these 
wonders of the chisel and the pencil as were 
those *of old in their adoration of "dead 
men's bones/' or in their desire for absolu- 
tion and indulgences. 

In some of the buildings there are vast 
collections of what may be called the " cu- 
riosities'* of the ancient and modern world; 
some of them procured by excavations 
among buildings covered by the wreck of 
the earthquake or volcano, or thrown down 
by barbarian violence; others gathered by 
diligent search over all parts of the earth. 
During long periods of its history the Ro- 
man Church was destructive of all beauty, 
both in nature and in art ; but for some cen- 
turies it has endeavoured to make its central 
seat attractive to all classes of visiters. The 
scholar and the artist, the stupid clown and 
the filthy barefooted pilgrim, can each find 
his favourite shrines, saints, and priesthood. 
There is the shrine of St. Luke, whom they 
have presumed to enthrone as the patron 
saint of painters, as well as one of St. An- 
thony, to whom they have assigned the 
special care of asses and horses. No degree 

of refinement, no depth of brvtal ignorance, 
2 



14 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



is disregarded in the wiles of papal sor- 
cery. 

But the attention of our readers is to be 
particularly directed to the remains of Chris- 
tian antiquity deposited in one portion of 
the Vatican. It is only as introductory to 
this that we have led them through its other 
spacious apartments. But a doubt may 
arise whether any confidence can be placed 
in the genuineness or true antiquity of these 
relics, or of any of them. We have heard 
so much of this department of papal im- 
posture, that much skepticism on this subject 
may be forgiven. W"e have, within the last 
year, seen the citizens of Amiens, vnth. the 
pomp of military array, and of richly robed 
ecclesiastical dignitaries, go forth to meet 
the bones of a woman of whom nothing, 
absolutely nothing, is known, excepting that 
she, or her husband, was probably born at 
Amiens. She, perhaps a Christian, perhaps 
a pagan, has been dragged from a Roman 
cemetery, with the sanction of the Pope 
labelled a martyr and saint, and borne in 
triumph to a gorgeous shrine in a populous 
city, there to be adored as its protecting 
goddess. Within this same year, also, we 



THE VATICAN. 15 



have seen in the official " Gazette of Vienna" 
tho announcement to its inhabitants that the 
tooth of St. Peter, given by Pius IX., the 
now reigning Pope, to the Emperor of Aus- 
tria, and deposited in the imperial chapel, 
would be, for four days, exposed to the sight 
and reverence of the faithfal! We know, 
also, how many heads, and arms, and teeth, 
and sometimes bodies, of the same saint, 
may be found in different churches, all bear- 
ing the attestation of the same hierarchy. 
At the time of the great Reformation, the 
fragments of the cross, enshrined and adored 
in different parts of Christendom, would 
have fully freighted a large merchant-ship. 
Even now, when Protestantism and increas- 
ing knowledge have thrown the greater part 
of that lumber into the fire, so much re- 
mains on holy altars and in costly reliquaries, 
the object of an absolute idolatry, that if 
only a tenth of it came from Calvary, the 
crosses of the thieves must have furnished 
all their wood for modern Catholic devo- 
tion. 

Such things, indeed, justify a scrupulous 
examination before we receive any relic as 
genuine upon papal testimony. But there 



16 THE CATACOMBS OP ROME. 



are genuine remains of early Christianity, 
and these are rendered only more valuable 
by the existence of so many worthless forge- 
ries. In that magnificent Ubrary of the 
Vatican is a manuscript of the Bible, con- 
taining the Old Testament of the Septuagint 
translators, and the New Testament in its 
original. Its date is assigned, by the best 
scholars, to the fourth century. In near 
compartments of the same libraiy are richly 
illuminated manuscripts, once the propeiiy 
of kings and nobles, containing legends of 
apocryphal saints, tales of ridiculous mira- 
cles and homilies of monkish doctrine, at 
the recital of which all the world would now 
laugh, and which no Roman priest would 
now repeat, even to the stupid Apennine 
mountaineer whose mule he is sprinkling 
with holy water. Precious is the Bible, 
always — everywhere. But what ' ' glory gilds 
that sacred page" when seen in such a place, 
with such associations ! How does its voice, 
resounding from the depths of fifteen centu- 
ries, testify to the old truth which the apos- 
tles preached, and for which the martyrs 
died — the gospel of our salvation through 
the grace of God by faith in Christ Jesus ! 



THE VATICAN. 17 



And Ilow decisive is its testimony against 
the whole system of self-righteousness, man- 
worship, priestly mediation, and rites of 
baptized paganism, now usurping the titles 
and honours of the primitive Christianity ! 
It is not strange that this celebrated manu- 
script of the Scriptures is the least accessible 
of all the manuscripts of the Vatican, shut 
up from the free inspection of the inquiring 
scholar, as its translation is from a free circu- 
lation among the people. 

And thus, in the gallery of Christian an- 
tiquities in the Vatican, while there are 
many spurious articles, the fraud of which 
an observer can easily detect, and many 
thousand articles truly ancient,but the relics 
of centuries when the purity and simplicity 
of the first faith and worship had become 
more or less corrupted, — ^there are many 
others, true memorials of the early disciples 
and martyrs, bearing witness how they 
preached and how they believed. 

The most important of these relics were col- 
lected by industrious antiquarians, zealous for 
knowledge or curious in matters of art, and 
probably little aware of the historical use of 
thei? discoveries; and they were arranged 

2* 



18 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



for inspection, and volumes of descriptions 
puljished, before attention had been drawn 
to their bearings upon the great controversy 
between Rome and the gospel. Their genu- 
ineness is therefore unquestionable, and we 
have the right and the privilege of listening 
to their testimony for Christ and his truth. 
Perhaps our hearts may be the better for 
this communion with those who so long ago 
confessed his name and died in faith. 

Let us return, then, to the long corridor, 
or gallery, to which we have already inci- 
dentally referred. It is called the Lapida- 
rian Gallery^ from a Latin word which means 
a stone-cutter, and is applied also to his 
w^ork. It will be seen that this department 
of the Vatican is very properly so named. 

This galleiy is, as we have said, one thou- 
sand feet, (or nearly one-fifth of a mile,) in 
length. It is almost filled with the records 
of the dead, the Christian and pagan dead of 
centuries long past. To the walls of this 
avenue, upon both sides, are attached flat 
stones^ generally from one to three feet in 
length, but less in width, and often of irre- 
gular form, having upon the surfaces inscrip- 
tions, sculptures, and occasionally a little 



THE VATICAN. 19 



painting. There are more than three thou- 
sand of these tablets in this gallery. Some 
of them are votive tablets, (that is, erected in 
fulfilment of a vow,) others dedications of pa- 
gan altars, others fragments of some public 
record. But these are comparatively few in 
number. Almost all these tablets are the tomb- 
stones of ancient Romans ; and the inscriptions 
upon their fronts are their epitaphs, such 
as are engraved upon the tomb-stones of the 
present day. And as we walk along this 
gallery, we may read upon the right hand 
and on the left, the names and something of 
the character of persons who lived in Rome 
fifteen or sixteen hundred years ago, and 
some probably at the beginning of the Chris- 
tian era. 

They are the tonib-stones of Romans ; but 
at that time there were many Christians in 
that great city, although the majority of its 
people were still pagans,— such pagans as 
Paul describes in the first chapter of his epistle 
to his Christian friends in Rome. We mi^xht 
expect then, that some of these tablets would 
refer to Christians, and others to pagans. 
Such is the fact ; and it is generally as easy 



20 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



to distinguish the one from the other as it 
would be to distinguish a portion of our 
Scriptures from a chapter of the Koran ; or 
as easy as it would be to distinguish our 
missionaries an<i their children from the 
heathen to whom they were telling the stoiy 
of Christ crucified. Skilful antiquaries have 
carefully attempted to separate and classify 
those tablets ; and have arranged the pagan 
memorials on the right side and the Christian 
upon the left, as we pass on from the common 
door of entrance. Thus, as we walk along 
between these two files of old Romans, and 
hear them speak, as from ''marble lips," we 
can judge for ourselves whether there was 
in ancient times any diflference ''between 
those who served God and those who served 
him not;" and it may be well for us also to 
consider on which side of the dividing line 
we should wish to have our names stand, 
should future generations perchance read a 
similar record of us and our contemporaries. 
Almost all the monumental tablets desig- 
nated as Christian were taken from the Ca- 
tacombs OF Rome, which we shall make the 
chief subject of this volume. The greater 



THE VATICAN. 



21 



portion were brought up into the light of day 
about three hundred years ago ; but there 
have been added, from time to time, many 
relics which the numerous explorers of the 
Catacombs have since discovered. To this 
gallery of Christian memorials we shall again 
and again return. 




Nero, Sixth Emperor of Rome. 



2? THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



CHAPTER n. 

THE CATACOMBS OF EGYPT AND OF PARIS. 

Before visiting the Catacombs of Rome, 
it may be wjbU to glance at some of the 
similar excavations found in other countries. 
The oldest of Vhich we have any know- 
ledge are rtiose of Egypt, which are very 
numerous and often of vast extent. Many 
of them were made in the time of the Pha- 
raohs, more than three thousand years ago. 

Probably the first excavations, afterwards 
used as tombs, were originally made in 
order to obtain durable material for build- 
ings. The river Nile, through the greater 
part of its course in Egypt, is attended 
by two ranges of mountains or hills, one 
on either side, and for the most part pa- 
rallel with the stream, and at a short dis- 
tance from it. Sometimes they approach 
each other, leaving to the river only a nar- 
row passage between high and steep battle- 



THE CATACOMBS OF EGYPT. 23 



ments of rocks ; but generally there is, be- 
tween their base and the bank of the river, 
a belt of land varying in width from a few 
rods to as many miles. This interval, which 
is usually much broader on the western than 
on the eastern side, is made rich and produc- 
tive by the overflowing of the Nile ; and the 
granaries of Egypt are for the most part sup- 
plied from this fertile valley. 

Along this interval, and upon elevated 
places, the ancient cities stood. The more 
durable materials for building these cities, 
^s well as for rearing those vast and won- 
derful monuments with .which this country 
abounds, — the temples of their gods and 
the pyramids of their kings, — were taken 
from the sides of these mountain ranges. 
Very numerous and very extensive quarries 
must therefore have been wrought in order 
to furnish the requisite materials both for 
the masses and the ornaments of their 
gigantic structures. 

From earliest tmies the Egyptians were 
accustomed to embalm their dead. In this 
condition bodies could be preserved foK an 
indefinite period. Some of these mummies 
are, apparently, as perfect to-day as when 



24 THE CATACOMBS OF KOxME. 



first embalmed, two or three thousand years 
ago. This desire to preserve the remains 
of the dead nncorrupted, rendered it neces- 
sary that in the vicinity of every large city 
and in every populous district, a space should 
be appropriated for the residence of the 
dead, perhaps equal in extent to that occu- 
pied by the living. The security of their 
embalmed dead required also stronger walls 
for their "long home" than the soft mud of 
the river bank, or the loose sand of the de- 
sert. Under these circumstances they would 
naturally think of these spacious excavationa 
as suitable resting-places and store-houses 
of their dead ; and in the silent chambers 
of the dry sandstone rock they would depo- 
sit their mummied bodies. Thus, probably, 
these quarries in the mountain-sides became 
the final homes of the very persons who had 
helped to form them. 

Soon, however, the more wealthy and noble 
caused other excavations to be made, solely 
for the purposes of burial for themselves 
and their families. These were, of course, 
smaller, but more convenient for the pur- 
pose, and many of them richly ornamented. 
They covered the walls with paintings and 



THE CATACOMBS OF EGYPT. 25 



hieroglypliies, and even fiirnislied the apart- 
ments as if for the living. 

If, as some suppose, the Egyptians thought 
the souls of the dead tarried with the body 
as long as the body remained entire, then 
these pictures and writings upon the walls 
of their resting-places and other articles 
thus deposited, were probably designed to 
entertain the souls of the departed while 
they were awaiting there in solitude. They 
could read, in those inscriptions, the promi- 
nent events of their own lives, or their family 
history, or some of the most memorable 
things of the times in which they had lived ! 

These quarries for buildings and excava- 
tions for burial were in some localities so 
numerous that the mountain-sides were rid- 
dled almost to the resemblance of a honey- 
comb. 

Such underground burial-places received 
from the Greeks a name which, with hardly 
the change of a letter, forms our word 
"catacombs,'' and which, in their language, 
means a ''hollow," or recess abounding in 
caves. 

From these ancient tombs in the rocks of 
Egypt have been taken all the mummies 
3 



26 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



(or at least the best specimens of mummies) 
which have been exhibited in such numbers 
in Europe and America. There is no pro- 
bability that the supply will fail, as these 
catacombs, with their embalmed inhabit- 
ants, are found. at short intervals all along 
the mountain-sides, on both banks of the 
Nile, for scores of miles. They are most 
numerous, however, and most extensive in 
the neighbourhood of the ancient cities, as 
Memphis and Thebes. 

An English traveller in Egypt thus de- 
scribes the "Tombs of the Kings,'' which 
are on the western side of the Nile, near 
Thebes. Although these are much more 
magnificent than those of the common peo- 
ple, they will help us to form a more distinct 
and correct idea of them. The traveller left 
the Nile, crossed the plain, and entered a 
valley betv^^een the mountains, and followed 
this gradually narrowing defile for half an 
hour, until a range of gloomy, perpendicular 
precipices in the sandstone mountain forbade 
all further progress. 

'' At the foot of this melancholy barrier 
we descried a few dark apertures, like en- 
trances to subterranean cavcnis, singularly 



THE CATACOMBS OF EGYPT. 27 



gloomy and mysterious in effect: in the 
rocky walls of tlie lateral fissures we gra- 
dually made out others, and these were 
entrances of those wonderful tombs which 
the kings of mighty Thebes made for them- 
selves ' in desolate places ;' many of which 
still remain hidden from research among the 
deep chasms of this funereal region. 

" The sandy valley, with the reflection from 
the arid cliffs, began to grow glaring and 
oppressive as we stood at the head of the 
flight of steps which descends steeply into 
the principal tomb. It is not without awe 
that we penetrate by this ruined stair-case 
into the abode of death. The shadows fall 
deeper as we descend, and the faint blue 
light from above just enables us to see the 
sculptures on the dusky walls which line the 
passages, hieroglyphics relating to the owner 
of the tomb, and figures emblematical of 
the passage into the realms of futurity." 

After having described the ruins of tem- 
ples, statues and the various monuments of 
antiquity with which that region abounds, 
the same writer adds — 

''These isolated monuments are far from 
giving an adequate impression of Thebes. 



28 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



They stand on the edge of a vast funereai 
field, extending from the cultivated alluvium 
to the sandstone mountain which bounds 
the plain, intersected by obscure and danger- 
ous paths among yawning mummy-pits and 
graves. Ranges of tombs hewn in the moun- 
tain above, some greater in extent even than 
those of the kings, penetrate far into the 
bowels of the mountain ; chamber after cham- 
ber, and passage after passage, whose walls, 
as the light is applied to them, kindle into a 
vivid epitome of the life of the old Egyptian 
world — its religious solemnities, its familiar 
usages, its progress from the cradle to the 
grave, its scenes of daily domestic life, of 
high festivity and solemn funeral, with the 
passage of the dead into the realms of futurity, 
the judgment and the mysterious transmi- 
gration of the soul. 

^' Who could suspect that all this is revealed 
to us in these wonderful sepulchres, which 
externally appear but holes in the sandy 
rock? And how strange and sad is it to 
come forth to the light of day, after this 
long and absorbing converse in these dusky 
recesses with the past life of this great 
people, and behold the wrecks of their 



THE CATACOMBS OF EGYPT. 29 



proud city wide-spread over the empty, deso- 
late plain ! The pits also in which are depo- 
sited the mummied remains of the ancient 
inhabitants are among the most singular 
spectacles. Some of the bodies are merely 
dried, but those of the more wealthy classes, 
enveloped in a shroud of fine linen, with, 
aromatic gums, are heaped together in hor- 
rid grotesque confusion, like the skeletons 
and heaps of bones in a neglected charnel- 
house. 

"Few things are more impressive than to 
wander through this Necropolis of Thebes, 
where the mighty and the rich lie blended 
with inferior dust; bewildered among this 
chaos of tombs, and mummy-pits, and yawn- 
ing chasms, among which you must cau- 
tiously pick your way, and where the sole 
sound heard is the yelling of dogs echoing 
wildly among the cliffs." 

Leaving for a while these ancient sleepers 
in their rocky chambers, let us look at a 
specimen of modern catacombs ; which may 
be useful as a farther introduction to our 
survey of those of ancient Rome. 

The Catacombs of Paris furnish many in- 
teresting points of resemblance to those of 

3* 



30 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



Rome, especially in regard to their oi'igin 
and their subsequent use. 

The oldest part of the city of Paris is 
that which lies on the south side of the river 
Seine. The materials for building that 
splendid city have been derived chiefly from 
quarries underlying this part of it. The 
material is a kind of limestone, v^hich is 
easily wi^ought at first, but which becomes 
very hard on exposure to the air. 

These quarries now extend under one sixth 
part of the whole city ; that is, they extend 
over an area of two hundred acres or more. 
In order to make the roof over them more 
firm and safe, columns of solid rock are left 
here and there, like the pillars of a great 
cathedral, and sometimes new supports of 
masonry have been added. But notwith- 
standing all this precaution, the roof has in 
some instances given way, precipitating into 
the depths the houses which were standing 
above them. 

In one of the passage-ways which run 
through those quarries is a deep well of pure 
water, which was sunk in order to supply the 
workmen while making the excavations ; 
and in another quarter there is a living 



THE CATACOMBS OF PARIS. 31 



spring with a clear, pebbly bottom, and 
gold-fish sporting in its waters, which was 
unexpectedly struck upon, after great ex- 
pense and labour had been incurred upon 
the well. 

As the population of any city increases, 
so increases the number of its dead; and 
all must be buried "out of the sight" of 
the living. Soon or late, in every large 
city, there is a difliculty in finding room for 
its extensive cemeteries. Fearful dangers to 
the living also follow upon the neglect to 
provide suitable mansions for the dead. 
Such was the condition of Paris as to its 
burial-places, when, about the year 1785, 
some persons (borrowing the idea from an- 
cient Egypt or Rome) proposed that these 
extensive quarries underneath the living 
Paris, should become the resting-place ot 
the far more numerous Paris dead. 

The suggestion was adopted, and soon 
carried out. As a part of the plan, many of 
the ancient cemeteries in and around the 
city were to be emptied of their sleeping 
tenants, and thus converted into building- 
lots or gardens. 

Accordingly the strange work began, and 



32 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



the bones of the dead of former generations 
were dug up and placed in funeral cars, and 
then borne along in the silence of night, at- 
tended by priests chanting the burial-ser- 
vice, and cast down, through a perpendicular 
shaft or pit, into the dark apartments below. 
There they were separated and assorted — 
all bones of the same kind being thrown 
together, although they may have belonged 
originally to ten thousand different persons ; 
and finally they were arranged in courses, 
or tiers, along the walls and in the spaces 
of these subterranean apartments and pas- 
sage-ways. It is estimated that these cata- 
combs now contain the bones of more than 
three millions of persons ! 

Through this strange and impressive 
scenery, — this Golgotha of the skeletons of 
many generations, — an American traveller 
passed in the year 1842, and thus describes 
its appearance and the impressions which it 
made upon his own mind : — 

"We descended by ninety steps, and 
found ourselves alone in the caverns. Fol- 
lowing our guide about twenty minutes, we 
3ame to a strong door, each side of wliich 
was ornamented with pillars of Tuscan 



THE CATACOMBS OF PARIS. 33 



architecture Over the door is this inscrip- 
tion in Latin: — ^Beyond these limits they 
rest, awaiting a blessed hope/ 

" Our guide opened the heavy door, and, 
as it grated on its hinges, I felt an involun- 
tary shudder, which was not quieted when 
we passed the threshold and found ourselves 
surrounded by walls of human bones, which 
the glare of our tapers showed to be regu- 
larly piled up from the floors to the roof of 
the quarries. The bones of the legs and the 
arms are laid closely in order, with their 
ends outward; and at regular intervals 
skulls are interspersed in three horizontal 
ranges, disposed so as to present alternate 
rows of the back and the front part of the 
head ; and sometimes a single perpendicular 
range is seen, still further varying the general 
outline. 

" Passing along what seemed to be inter- 
minable ranges of these piles of human re- 
mains, we came to several apartments ar- 
ranged like chapels, with varied dispositions 
of the piles of legs, arms and grinning 
skulls. Here, too, were vases and altars; 
some formed of bones entirely, and others 
surrounded with them. On many of these 



34 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



were inscriptions, generally of a religious 
bearing. 

"How new, how strange were the asso- 
ciations of the place ! Over our heads was 
rolling the vast tide of life, in the gay and 
wicked city. Its million of inhabitants were 
jostling each other on the high roads of bu- 
siness and pleasure, while here were the re- 
mains of four times their number lying, in 
silent, motionless piles, in the depths below ! 
And we, the living of to-day, were standing 
among the dead of a thousand years, in the 
qniet bosom of our mother Earth. 

"Religion, too, had thrown her rays of 
light into this empire of death; and we 
read, in an inscription before us, the sure 
word, declaring that even this universal em- 
pi re shall be broken: 'They that dwell in 
the dust of the earth shall arise, some to ever- 
lasting life, and some to shame and everlasting 
contempt,' 

" On a stone pillar near by is the admo- 
nition, so generally unheeded, but here irre- 
sistible, enforced as it is by the mute but 
eloquent evidences around: 'Remember that 
thou art dust.' 

" The inscriptions, ' Tomb of the Revolu- 



THE CATACOMBS OF PARIS. 35 



tion^' ' Tomb of the Victims^' over two cha- 
pels built up with bones, tell of the days of 
strife and blood between 1789 and 1793; 
and here are the remains of those who pe- 
rished in their frightful massacres. Alto- 
gether the effect of the place and its asso- 
ciations was oppressive in the extreme.''* 

The traveller has referred to the religious 
faith expressed in some of the inscriptions. 
The almost universal absence of the lan- 
guage of Christian hope from the monu- 
ments of Pere La Chaise and other Paris 
cemeteries has been often remarked by 
English and American visiters. During the 
reign of atheism and of terror in the French 
Revolution, many inscriptions were placed 
in the catacombs, conveying, in most re- 
volting plainness, the gloomy doctrines of 
fatalism and annihilation. Some of them 
yet remain ; others have been made to give 
place to the utterances of that blessed hope 
of a resurrection to immortal life, brought 
to light by the gospel of Christ. 

As an illustration of this, we will refer 
again to that living spring uncovered during 

-''- Dr. Durbiii, vol. i. 36, &c. 



36 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



the labours of the workmen. Their employ- 
ers could then find for it only the wi^etched 
name of the ''Fountain of Lethe/' or obli- 
vion, and inscribed near it the gloomy verses 
of Yirgil, representing the naked and mise- 
rable ghosts driven to that fabled river, there 
to drink eternal forgetfulness. It has now 
the name of the ''Fountain of the Samari- 
tan Woman," and the inscription is a tran- 
script of the sjiblirne words addressed to her 
by our Saviour, John iv. 13, 14 : " Whoso- 
ever drinketh of this water shall thirst again ; 
but w^hosoever drinketh of the water that I 
shall give him shall never thirst, but the 
water that I shall give him shall be in him a 
well of water springing up into everlasting 
life." 

We add a few words concerning the cata- 
combs of another city in France, on account 
of some facts concerning theu' use as places 
of refage, and of voluntary resort — in these 
points of their history resembling the cata- 
combs of ancient Rome. 

In the time of the Norman invasion of 
France, in the ninth centurj^, the inhabitants 
of Quesnel took refuge in the quarries from 
which the material of their houses had been 



THE CATACOMBS OF QUESNEL. 37 



taken. Finding these quarries too narrow 
and close for convenience, they enlarged 
them in width and height. Here they con- 
cealed themselves, their furniture, and even 
their cattle ; and to this day it is said that 
the young people of the district are wont to 
assemble there and spend long winter even- 
ings in work or social festivities. 

The descriptions and histories given in 
this chapter will furnish valuable sugges- 
tions and illustrations as we return to quar- 
ries and cemeteries consecrated by the 
visits of the early Christians, and by the 
ashes of their dead, — the catacombs of the 
Imperial City. 




Tiberius, third Emperor of Borne. 
4 



38 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



CHAPTER m. 

THE CATACOMBS OF ROME — THEIR ORIGIN. 

The catacombs of Rome, like those we have 
already described, were excavations made at 
first for the purpose of obtaining building 
material for the city. As Rome stood on 
seven hills, it was an easy matter to open quar- 
ries in the hill-sides, and here, undoubtedly, 
the work began. The earth in that neigh- 
bourhood abounds in a loose, porous stono, 
called tufa^ composed of volcanic cinders, or 
ashes, which, by the agency of water con- 
taining lime in solution, have formed a rock 
that is quite soft in its original bed, but 
hardens on being exposed to the air. It is 
consequently very easily cut in the quarry, 
and then becomes a very durable material in 
the construction of buildings ; and this is the 
character of the principal part of the build- 
ing material for both ancient and modern 
Rome. Several other cities in Italy and in 



THEIR ORIGIN. 39 



Sicily, (as, for example, Naples and Syracuse,) 
are built of the same kind of stone, obtained 
in the same manner ; and the excavations in 
the vicinity of these cities, made in obtaining 
it, have been used for the same purposes as 
we shall hereafter find those of Eome were. 

In some places in the vicinity of the city 
the same volcanic materials, in their original 
bed, have not hardened into stone, but 
are more like a compact sand, being suf- 
ficiently hard and tenacious to form a roof 
for the chambers excavated by the workmen. 
This sandy material, now called "pozzo- 
lana," or '^puzzolana,'' was almost as valua- 
ble to the Romans as the more solid rock, 
for they could make of it a very strong ce- 
ment, the very thing needed to bind to- 
gether the blocks of stone. A variety of 
this ^^pozzolana," found in certain locali- 
ties, forms that very peculiar and valuable 
cement which hardens under water, and 
which is known in commerce as "Roman 
cement.'' 

These sand-pits and stone-quarries were, 
of course, extended and multiplied in pro- 
portion to the increasing wants of a growing 
city. 



40 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



It was not long before all the seven hills 
upon which the city stood were perforated 
beneath with cells, passages, quarries and 
galleries. The Esquiline Hill, which was 
the largest of the seven and stood upon the 
coast, was so thoroughly undermined in this 
way as to render it dangerous to pass there, 
except with great care. We have one re- 
markable narrative of a fearful crime com- 
mitted in these Esquiline sand-quarries, in 
an oration of Cicero's before a Roman ju- 
dicial tribunal, sixty-six years before the 
birth of our Saviour. 

It is a story like those so often reported in 
the criminal records of modern cities, of a 
rich youug man committing himself to the 
society of the profligate, encouraged by 
them in every licentious excess, and cheered 
by their professions of disinterested friend- 
ship, till they have completed their arrange- 
ments for the plunder of their dupe and 
the division among themselves of the spoil. 
Then they rid themselves in the most sum- 
mary way of the miserable victim of his 
own folly and of their seductions. The 
young profligate of Rome was led, upon the 
pretence of a visit to the pleasure gardens, 



THEIR ORIGIN. 41 



to this retired and dangerous ground, and 
there murdered in one of these subterranean 
pits. Another circumstance caused the 
whole vicinity of these excavations under 
and around the Esquiline Hill to be deserted 
by all the reputable citizens, rendering it 
more infamous and dangerous. 

It was the general custom among the Ro- 
mans of that day to burn their dead. There 
were some exceptions, even of the most no- 
ble families ; but among those able to incur 
the expense of the funeral pyre, the excep- 
tions were, comparatively, very few. But a 
vast multitude of the population were too 
poor to furnish the needed materials for a 
faneral pile ; and the slaves, whose numbers 
were immense, were generally ''buried with 
the burial of a dog." Those, also, who had 
been put to death for crimes, and suicides, 
were prohibited by law from what was con- 
sidered the most honourable rite. From the 
necessity thus existing, the senate gave up 
this hill as a common burial-ground, where 
a burial might be had without cost, and 
without regard to the character'of the de- 
ceased. The result was that the dead crimi- 
nals and the dead poor and dead strangers, 

4* 



42 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



were brought hither, and thrown promiscu- 
ously into these sand-pits, or quarries. 

Even now, in Naples, a city called Chris- 
tian, the royal seat of the king most catholic, 
almost all of the vast numbers of its dead are 
thrown into common pits, with a horrid reck- 
lessness, of which we might search in vain 
even the brute creation to find a parallel. 
And yet for some, even of the slaves, deposit- 
ed here, there was a kinder provision than is 
now made for the poor Neapolitan. " Hither,*' 
(says the Roman poet Horace, of this region,) 
'^ the cast-out bodies of slaves were brought 
by their fellow-servants to be deposited in 
ill-made colfins in narrow cells. This mass 
of corruption made the whole atmosphere 
of that quarter unpleasant and unwhole- 
some. All therefore who could, removed 
to other parts of the city, or to the plains 
around the city. And thus this neighbour- 
hood was deserted of all except the more 
miserable of the living, and the robber a*nd 
outlaw, w^ho burrowed there, close by the 
decaying dead — knowing that the officers of 
justice would be reluctant to go there to 
ferret them out and bring them to punish- 
ment. While it was in this condition the 



THEIR ORIGIN. 43 



attention of the senate was called to it as to 
a '^ public nuisance." 

Subsequently, and about the time of the 
oirth of our Saviour, the Emperor Augustus 
gave that whole district to his wealthy friend 
Maecenas, with the understanding that he 
should redeem it from its wretched condi- 
tion. In the course of a few years Maecenas 
had expelled all the criminals from their 
hiding-places, had filled up the open pits, 
which act also covered up the putrefying 
dead, smoothed down the surface, planted 
there beautiful and extensive gardens, and 
built for himself a magnificent palace. 
Here he lived in splendour and luxury ; 
and as he was the special friend and patron 
of learning, here were frequently gathered 
around him the most illustrious authors and 
scholars of his day. We may correctly 
imagine him, with Virgil and Horace at his 
side, walking among the fountains, or seated 
under the cool shades of his garden, or re- 
clining at a luxurious banquet, while the 
bones of the dead filled the old quarries be- 
neath them. 

But we have wandered a little from our 
subject, and so hasten back to say that al- 



44 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



thougli this section of tlie city was no longer 
used for the purposes of burial, still the 
habit of burying the dead in these quarries 
and sand-pits was continued in every direc- 
tion in other quarters and on all sides. The 
growth of the city required a constant in- 
crease of the subterranean excavations, in 
order to get materials for their dwellings ; 
and the proportionate increase of the dead 
each year kept pace with this increase of 
space beneath the ground for their recep- 
tion. 

It may help the reader to estimate the 
probable extent of these subterranean exca- 
vations, if he will consider the size of the 
city and of some of the many public build- 
ings which added much to its glory. The 
old Romans were gross idolaters, and wor- 
shipped a multitude of gods. History tells 
us that at one time they had one hundred 
and twenty temples dedicated to as many 
deities. There were also very extensive 
and magnificent baths, numbering in all, 
public and private, seventeen hundi^ed at 
least ; many of them, though called " baths," 
containing large libraries, galleries of art, 
covered walks, and halls for gymnastic ex- 



THEIR ORIGM. 45 



ercises. The water for the city was intro- 
duced and distributed by twenty aqueducts 
of stone, resting on -arches of two or three 
stories, and one of them sixty miles long ! 
The Cochituate water-works of Boston, the 
Croton works of New York, and the .Fair- 
mount works of Philadelphia, if all united, 
would not compare with the aqueducts of 
this single city, in point of extent or mag- 
nificence. 

There was one theatre that could accom- 
modate twenty-two thousand spectators ; an- 
other, forty thousand ; and one amphitheatre, 
the Coliseum, within whose vast capacity 
one hundred thousand could sit and witness 
the bloody sports of the arena. 

As we shall refer to this again in a future 
chapter, we here introduce an engraved view 
of the ruins of this magnificent structure. 

Add to these a great number of other pub- 
lic buildings, whose remains even now tes- 
tify as to their greatness, the lofty walls of 
the city, and the almost innumerable dwell- 
ings of the common people, a multitude that 
at some periods of the history of Rome were 
numbered by millions; and consider, too, 
that the city had been in existence some 



46 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



seven hundred years, during which time 
many of these pubKc works were destroy- 
ed and replaced by others ; and we may 
then understand that as all, or almost all, 
the materials had been taken from beneath 
the soil, there would hardly be any limit to 
the excavations. We must not wonder, 
then, when we are told that, in some direc- 
tions from the city, the land was perforated 
with one continued net-work of excavations 
for the distance of fifteen miles. 

Here, then, beneath the soil, are the apart- 
ments opened and space prepared for many 
interesting incidents relating both to the 
living and the dead. And besides all the 
knowledge we now have of what happened 
and was recorded there, who can say how 
many events and records, equally interest- 
ing, lie there unknown and unread amid 
those intricate ramifications, and will lie 
thus concealed until the great day when the 
books are opened and all secret things are 
made manifest ? 



KAKLY CHRISTIANS. 47 



CHAPTER TV. 

TLE EARLY CHRISTIANS IN ROME. 

The Epistle of Paul to the Romans is a 
religious letter from that apostle to his fel- 
low Christians, or to the Christian church in 
that city. He often wrote to his brethren 
in Christ similar letters of instruction and 
of love, when circumstances prevented his 
visiting them in person. It is generally sup- 
posed that this epistle was written about 
A. D. 57. In^the eighth verse of the first 
chapter, Paul thanks God through Jesus 
Christ that their faith is spoken of " through- 
out the whole world," — meaning, of course, 
the then known world, almost all of which 
•was at that time comprehended within the 
Roman Empire. 

A beacon kindled upon a hill-top in a 
dark night can be seen throughout a ver}'- 
large extent of the surrounding country: 
and thus this band of faithful Christians 



48 THE CATACOMBS OP KOME. 



sucli as the Saviour called " the light of the 
world," placed in the capital of the world, 
were known and made their faith known, 
not at Rome only, but in her subject na- 
tions. Obeying their Master's command, 
these disciples caused their light to shine be- 
fore men, and they saw their good works and 
glorified their God and Saviour. Strangers 
coming into Rome from the distant pro- 
vinces heard of this new sect of " Christians,'' 
and, with the curiosity of travellers, sought 
their acquaintance, and carried back a re- 
port of them and of their doctrines to their 
own homes. They were represented as ab- 
staining from fleshly lusts, faithfal in duty 
and abounding in charity. Even the heathen 
who knew them with any degree of inti- 
macy, could not but testify to their integrity. 
It is not strange that Paul, whose whole 
body and soul and spirit were devoted to 
the service and glory of Christ, rejoiced 
and thanked God when he heard among all 
nations such testimonies concerning the 
Christians of Rome, so honourable to their 
faith and to its Author. 

We may infer generally from this epistle 
that the church at Rome was already nume- 



EARLY CHRISTIANS 49 



rous ; a fact confirmed by the statement of 
pagan writers. 

About seven years after this, Paul was 
himself in Rome. "Writing thence to the 
Christian church at Philippi, he says to them, 
(chap. iv. 22,) "All the saints salute you, 
chiefly they that are of Caesar's household.*' 
There were, therefore, at that time, not only 
many believers in Rome, but Christianity 
had made so much progress among this 
idolatrous people, that it had entered into 
the imperial presence, and had filled some 
hearts there with joy and peace in believing. 
This may seem very strange when we re- 
member that the Caesar at this time was no 
other than the infamous Nero ; but there is 
no evidence that he had, at this period of 
his reign, any special enmity to the Chris- 
tians. Probably, like his tutor Seneca, the 
philosopher, he regarded all religious faith 
and forms of worship with utter indiffer- 
ence, if they came n^t in direct collision 
with his personal dignity or sensual in- 
dulgences. He wore, also, for some years, 
the mask of a character specially gentle and 
merciful — a tiger covered with the fleece of 
the lamb. There may, then, have been, 



50 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



even in his houseliold, no special obstacles 
to the triumph of the gospel, except those 
existing everywhere at Rome. But if Nero 
had been then the visible tjrrant which he 
became seven years afterward, when he 
cruelly persecuted the Christians, and if all 
in his household had been naturally as hard- 
hearted as himself, the Spirit of God was 
powerful enough to enter even there, and con- 
vert the most bitter enemies into the friends 
of Christ, by the same omnipotent grace 
which had already converted Saul of Tarsus. 
Here^ then, was a large church in the 
midst of an idolatrous and most profligate 
community. In the very last place where 
we should have looked for a church of 
Christ, and among a people whom it would 
seem almost impossible to interest in such a 
character as that of our Redeemer, or in 
such spiritual and peaceable doctrines as He 
taught — even here, and thus early, we find a 
church from which " sounded out the word 
of the Lord" into all the Roman world! 
Surely, then, the Divine Spirit who was 
able to accomplish this is also able to esta- 
blish and to continue the church of Christ in 
all the cities of the present heathen world ^ 



EARLY CHRISTIANS. 61 



for in none of them are there such opposing 
powers of wickedness in every form as in 
that mighty and corrupt city. 

It is a question of much interest how the 
gospel was first introduced into Rome, and 
by what agencies its earhest triumphs had 
been won. The Papists would answer us at 
once, ^' By the apostle Peter, certainly, who 
founded the church, established there his apos- 
tolic seat, and made the Church of Rome the 
mother and head of all the churches.'* 

The first inquiry suggested by such a claim, 
and an inquiry to which they have never 
given a satisfactory answer, is. Why then 
does not Paul mention Peter in this long 
epistle, which he sent to the church at Rome ? 
It contains, in almost every page, matters 
on which a reference to that apostle's life or 
doctrines would seem inevitable, if he had 
been the founder of that church, or had, in 
fact, even been with them as a teacher. 
The last chapter of this epistle is ahnost 
filled with the names of persons there, or of 
those who had been in some way connected 
with them. But in all the epistle there is 
no allusion to the person or name of Peter. 
Moreover, Paul was, afterward, at least two 



62 THE CATACOMBS OP ROME. 



years a resident at Rome, and from that 
place wrote his epistles to the Ephesians, 
Philippians, Colossians, to Philemon, and 
the second epistle to Timothy ; but in none 
of these is there any hint that Peter was 
then in Rome, or ever had been there. 

Now it is hardly possible to believe that 
there could have been this total silence on 
the subject if Peter had ever been in Pome 
at all, and the silence would be yet more in- 
explicable if Peter had founded that church. 
It was not at all like the noble-minded Paul 
either to claim as his own other men's foun- 
dations, or to forget or obscure the faithfal 
labours of a fellow-apostle in this manner. 

In fact, the history of the apostolic la- 
bours contained in the New Testament 
proves conclusively that during all that 
part of the first century, the efibrts of Pe- 
ter were directed to the Jews in their own 
land and in their dispersions — the gospel of 
the circumcision being committed to him. 
During those years he could not have visited 
the distant metropolis of the Gentiles. He 
may afterward have gone to Rome— he 
may have sufiered martyrdom there — but 
the very slight testimony to the truth of 



EARLY CHKISTIANS. 53 



either statement is greatly weakened by the 
mass of improbabilities and impossibilities 
with which that testimony is encumbered. 
If, however, he was ever there, it was not 
till long after the church was founded ; not 
till after Paul's epistles were all written; 
and, probably, not till after Paul's martyr- 
dom. The only ground for the assumption 
that Peter founded the church at Rome is 
a tradition of doubtful character. We shall 
find information as to the probable origin 
of the church at Rome in Acts ii. 10. 

Among the mixed multitude in Jerusalem 
at the Pentecost, Luke mentions " strangers 
of Rome.'' These were devout Jews, or pro- 
selytes to the Jewish religion, who had come 
up from Rome to celebrate the great reli- 
gious festivals. They, with others gathered 
from many nations, heard the sermon of 
Peter, felt the power of the Holy Ghost upon 
their hearts, were convicted and converted. 
In other words, they became Christians. 

In due time they returned to their homes 
in Rome, but it was with a new song in their 
mouths. The great aim of their labours and 
lives was thenceforward, whether at home or 
abroad, whether among Romans or Greeks 

5^ 



54 THE CATACOMBS OF KOME. 



or barbarians, not to increase their worldly 
riches, for they had ^' found the pearl of 
great price," but to show forth the praises 
of Him who had called them out of dark- 
ness into this marvellous light. Probably 
they devoted most of their time to spreading 
abroad the knowledge of His salvation. Be- 
ing all brethren in Christ, they v/ould visit 
each other often, to talk over the wonderful 
scenes they had witnessed at Jerusalem, to 
express the love which the Saviour had shed 
abroad in their hearts, and to unite in the 
sweet exercises of praise and prayer. As 
soon as even a small number had become fa- 
miliarly known to each other, their '' gather- 
ing together" would be at the stated times 
designated in the Scriptures, and at some 
appointed place convenient for their meet- 
ings. Ha\dng received from apostolical au- 
thority injunctions to keep not only the 
faith but also the order of the gospel, there 
would very soon be officers of the church, 
duly set over them in the Lord, whom they 
esteemed highly in love for their work's 
sake ; and all the special ordinances of the 
church would be observed, as instituted by 
its divine Founder. 



EARLY CHRISTIANS. 55 



Such is, probably, the history of the origin 
of the church at Rome. But, whatever was 
its origin, and whoever may have been its 
founder, it was a true church of Christ, and 
soon became large in numbers, containing, 
as we have seen, some members from the 
household of the emperor, and it sent out 
an influence favourable for the success of the 
gospel into other parts of the empire. 

, While thus sending its name and its influ- 
ence abroad, this church was doing a no less 
important work at home. Like good leaven 
it was gradually leavening more and more 
of the mass with which it was mingled. 
When a Philip, for instance, had found his 
Saviour, he immediately went in search of 
some brother Nathanael, that he also might 
become acquainted with Christ ; or, when an 
Andrew was called, ''he first findeth his 
own brother Simon," and bringeth him also 
to Jesus. Thus there were added continu- 
ally unto the church such as should be 
saved. 

Almost all the apostles, and the first dis- 
ciples of Christ named in the New Testa- 
ment, were from the humbler classes. The 
learned doctors, the Pharisees and rulers. 



56 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



and men of that class, were too jroud to 
accept of salvation at the hands of so meek 
and lowly a Saviour. This was as if men 
dying of hunger or of thirst, should refuse 
food or water unless brought to them by 
men clothed in the gorgeous raiment worn 
in king's palaces. At the same time some 
of the wealthy and noble were called — the 
wealthy publican, the "honourable coun- 
sellor," and the dignified ruler. All fhe 
honours of the Jewish church and state 
awaited Saul, had he continued to be the 
zealous Pharisee and fierce persecutor. But 
Christ called him to be his servant and apos- 
tle, that he might show to the world that 
his Spirit was powerful enough to convert 
the proudest heart, and his mercy large 
enough to forgive the greatest of sinners, 
and that his gospel was suflicient to in- 
terest the most gifted minds, and important 
enough to employ the noblest talents in its 
constant service. 

And thus it was at Rome. "While some 
were converted from the household of the 
emperor, and from other exalted stations, 
the great majority of the Christie converts 
during the first three centuries were from 



EARLY CHRISTIANS. 67 



the humbler classes. Wliile the doctrine 
of Christ crucified was to the philosophers 
and patricians of Rome foolishness, it was, 
to many a poor plebeian, unlettered labour- 
er and oppressed slave, the power of God, 
and the wisdom of God unto salvation. 

Let us learn a practical lesson for our- 
selves in this respect. We sometimes envy 
those who are above us, and are discon- 
tented that we are not as learned, or as 
rich, or as much admired or honoured as 
they are. But let us remember that the 
best possible position in life for us is that 
which is most favourable to our becoming 
true Christians. It is among the character- 
istics of the Christian faith, that it calls its 
disciples from among the lowly and despised. 
''Not many wise men after the flesh, not 
many mighty, not many noble, are called." 
How much more blessed a sei^ant in the 
family of Martha and Mary and Lazarus, in 
their humble dwelling at the foot of Mount 
Olivet, far from city pleasures and city 
temptations, when the Lord Jesus Clirist, 
the friend of sinners, came often to visit the 
house, and left his blessing upon the house- 
hold, than any citizen of Rome then dwell • 



58 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



ing in tiie most magnificent of her palaces, 
though he were endowed with the genius 
of Virgil, lived in the elegant refinement 
of Msecenas, or exercised the power of 
Caesar. Happy is the condition, however 
humble, of those who are loving and serving 
Christ; blessed the place, however lowly, 
from which the Saviour is taking jewels for 
his crown ! 

There was much in the national character 
of the Romans proud and stoical, much in 
their history full of violence and usurpation, 
much in the moral state of the aristocracy 
sensual beyond example, much in the preva- 
lent philosophical systems universally skep- 
tical — to harden the hearts of the higher 
classes against the gospel. The poor were 
more ready to embrace the mercy offered 
them. Of these the sand-diggers and 
miners — those who were employed in the 
subterranean excavations of which we have 
spoken — were a distinct class, not unlike 
the miners and colliers in England at the 
present day. They were also a very nume- 
rous class. Many of them were probably 
slaves, toward whom the Roman law and 
the Roman castoms allowed every kind of 



EARLY CHRISTIANS. 59 



cruelty and insult without the least redress. 
Neither the laws nor public opinion in- 
terfered to protect them; and the other 
labourers in the quarries were probably 
treated but little better than the slaves. 

To this class, as to others in Rome, some 
Christians came (perhaps one just returned 
from his visit to Jerusalem and from the 
scenes of Pentecost) with the glad tidings 
of that one Friend who, though he was rich, 
yet for our sakes became poor, that we 
through his poverty might be rich. He 
had sent out his messengers in his name 
'^to preach the gospel to the poor, to heal 
the broken hearted, to preach deliverance to 
the captives, and restoring of sight to the 
blind ; to set at liberty them that are 
bound, to preach the acceptable year of 
the Lord." All day long they were shut up 
to their hard work under ground, amid the 
gloom of darkness, save the feeble light of a 
lamp or torch ; and excluded from the joy- 
ous influence of the light of day and all the 
beauties of creation which it reveals to man ; 
but the kind-hearted Christian, full of the 
spirit of his compassionate Master, came 
down, to tell them about that better world, 



60 THE CATACOMBS OF KOME. 



where the weary are at rest, and where there 
is no night, and no more sorrow. It is not 
strange that here the gospel found many 
hearts open to receive it ; and we have 
abundant evidence that among these hum- 
ble workmen and their families there were 
found many of the most grateful and con- 
sistent and faithful members of the church 
of Christ at Rome. 

Here is an engraving of one of this class, 
not from a picture drawn by the imagina- 
tion, but copied from one painted on the 
very stone which was found at the mouth of 
the grave or cell in which he was buried. 
Observe the inscription in Latin over the 
top. It reads thus : " Diogenes, the Fossor, 
buried in peace on the eighth day before the 
kalends of October." 

The term kalends means the first day of 
the month. This fossor, or miner, was 
therefore buried on the 23d of September. 

Notice the implements used in his work ; 
the pick-axe upon his shoulder, in his other 
hand the lamp, held by the spike with which 
it was fastened to the rock while he worked, 
the compasses used in marking out the cells, 




Diogenes, the Fossor. 



p. 60. 



EARLY CHRISTIANS. 61 



and several other tools adapted to this kind 
of labour. 

On the sides of the room in which he 
stands, are the slabs closing the openings 
into the cells or graves. On each side of 
the inscription is a picture of a dove with an 
olive-branch, the common symbol of Chris- 
tian peace. On the left shoulder, and on 
the lower part of the tunic, are figures, which 
probably are the Greek letter X beginning 
the name of Christ ; whence it is concluded, 
without doubt, that Diogenes was a Chris- 
tian, but of what century it is impossible to 
say. 

It will be seen at a glance that the whole 
picture indicates only lowliness and poverty. 
But it is, undoubtedly, a representative of 
the workmen best clad and best treated. 

At the end of this chapter is a rude sketch, 
and probably representing the larger num- 
ber of them. There is no class of pictures 
in the catacombs more numerous than that 
representing the fossors. 

The early church at Eome contained, as 
we have said, many of the poor and the 
heavy laden besides the labourers in the 
dark and damp catacombs. We have, not 



62 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



only in the writings of the Christian fathers, 
but also in the works of pagan authors, 
many allusions to the inferior condition (as 
to wealth and rank) of most of those who 
constituted the church at that period. 

Celsus was an . infidel, and a scoffer at 
Christianity, who lived from the middle to 
the latter part of the second century. In 
addition to the arguments of a false philoso- 
phy, he resorted to that low form of ridicule 
which is the most mean and cowardly mode 
of opposing another, and always betrays 
weakness, either in the person who uses it 
or in the cause he is endeavouring to sup- 
port. In this spirit he seized hold of the 
fact that " not many wise, not many noble, 
were called," and made it the occasion of the 
sneering sarcasm, ^' Wool- workers, leather- 
dressers, cobblers, the most illiterate of man- 
kind, are zealous preachers of the gospel !'' 

It is often easier to insult an opinion than 
to refute it. We know that there was much 
gross misrepresentation in the statements 
made by the first adversaries of Christianity 
as to the intellectual as well as moral cha- 
racter of its disciples. The preaching of 
the gospel was not committed to agents 



EARLY CHRISTIANS. 63 



wholly unfitted by narrowness of mind, or 
ignorance, for their noble work. When its 
divine Anthor called fishermen and a pub- 
lican to be his chosen apostles, he became 
himself their teacher, opened their minds to 
understand the Scriptures, and gave them 
treasures of wisdom by the revelation of his 
Spirit. And they, when sending forth others, 
constantly charged them to be diligent in 
every mode of personal improvement, to 
give themselves to reading and meditation, 
that their profiting therein might appear to 
all. Such was the standard of the primitive 
teacher. And yet it is also true that there 
were many ignorant and illiterate whom 
grace had raised from moral degradation, 
whose hearts were kindled to grateful zeal, 
and whose lips were opened to tell to their 
fellows in the quarries and in the slave mart 
and in the streets and fields, the story of 
Christ, and what he had done to bless poor 
sinners like themselves. If all the preachers 
of the gospel had been thus illiterate, and all 
the believers thus lowly, one of them might 
have replied to this taunt of Celsus, "I am 
sorrj that all besides these lowly classes are 
too proud or too wicked to accept of the 



64 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



gospel! I am sorry that the Son of God 
counts so few of them worthy to be his fol- 
lowers !'' 

But let that taunt of Celsus stand. It is 
one of the many evidences of the truth of 
our holy religion, for it discloses one of the 
strongest of the prejudices by which it was 
opposed in the minds of the haughty Ro- 
mans, to whom, as well as to the imagina- 
tive Greek and the indotent Oriental, the 
gospel came, humbling all pride and casting 
down eyevj high imagination that exalted 
itself before it. If it had not, indeed, been 
of God, how could it have increased from a 
small and unpromising beginning, under cir- 
cumstances so unfavourable, with such ra- 
pidity and power, that within less than two 
hundred years from that time, it not only 
comprehended in its ranks the most learned 
and most noble of the people, but sat, with 
an undisputed title, upon the imperial 
throne ? 

There is another and a pleasing anecdote 
that illustrates the position in the world of a 
large number of the early Christian church. 

About the middle of the third century, 
and while the Christians were suffering cruel 



EARLY CHRISTIANS. 65 



persecutions under the Emperor Decius, 
there was a deacon in the church at Rome 
named Laurentius. In the primitive church 
the deacons were guardians of the poor, and 
distributed among them the money which 
the other members contributed for that pur- 
pose. An officer of the emperor having ob- 
served that considerable sums of money 
passed through the hands of Laurentius in 
this manner, concluded that if the church 
gave away so much to the poor, its treasury 
must be very abundantly filled, and he re- 
solved to seize upon its hoards in the name 
of the emperor. 

Accordingly Laurentius was commanded 
by him to deliver up the treasures of the 
church for confiscation. The deacon asked 
for three days in which to collect them. His 
request was granted. During this time he 
gathered together into the courts and porches 
of one of the churches, the aged, the lame, 
the blind, the diseased, and the poor, a large 
multitude, but consisting of those only who 
had received the charities of the church. 
Then he called upon the Roman officer with 
the invitation, '^ Come, see the treasures of 
our God. You shall see a great court full 



66 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



of vessels of gold, and talents heaped up in 
the porches/* The officer followed, and the 
assembled poor were shown to him. " Be- 
hold now," said Lanrentius, "the treasures 
I promised you. I add to these the widows 
and orphans ; these are our pearls and pre- 
cious stones, the crown of the church. Take 
this wealth for Rome, for the emperor, and 
for yourself." 

Having referred to this Christian deacon, 
we will add that he is called in the calendar 
of Papal saints, St. La^vrence. He sufiered 
martyrdom under Decius, a. d. 254. The 
particular circumstances of his martyrdom 
come to us through the legends of the monks 
o^ the Middle Ages, who delighted, in the 
gloom of their prison-like cells, to imagine 
the most horrible pictures of torture, some- 
times described as the work of pagan perse- 
cutors, sometimes as the self-inflicted pe- 
nance of those who thought they could thus 
secure their own salvation. Their story is 
that this faithful servant of Christ and of his 
church was roasted to death over a slow 
fire ! In the multitude of falsehoods with 
which the Roman martyrology is filled, we 
have no certainty '' by what death he glori- 



EARLY CHRISTIANS. 



67 



fied Grod." But if it were, indeed, such a 
death of fearful agony^ better its temporary 
pangs, followed by peace and joy eternal, 
than to breathe out the life gently upon a 
couch of down, and then sink into " the fire 
that never shall be quenched/' 




68 THE CATACOMBS OF KOME. 



CHAPTER V. 

PERSECUTION OF THE CHRISTIANS AT ROME. 

We now come upon a portion of our his- 
tory fall of events to excite both painful 
sympathy and joyful thanksgiving. Blessed 
be the Author and Finisher of our faith, 
whose power and grace sustained so many 
in the day of fiery trial, who counted not 
their lives dear unto them for His name's 
sake ! 

" The Christian church has ever shown a 
disposition to distinguish in a peculiar man- 
ner those who have shed their blood in de- 
fence of the faith. The honour paid to 
them in difierent times and places has va- 
ried ; but, while truth is valued among men, 
it is impossible that they should be lightly 
esteemed, who, facing torments and death 
with resolution, purchased, not for them- 
selves but for others, the blessings of reli- 
gious freedom. Notwithstanding the calum- 



PERSECUTION. 69 



mes of enemies, and the inventions of mis- 
taken friends, between which, truth has ma- 
terially suffered, it is certain that these 
soldiers of Christ have from time to time 
achieved the most glorious and permanent 
triumphs: in the great assaults made on 
heathenism or superstition they have led the 
attack as the forlorn hope, and fallen victo- 
rious : — 

* strange conquest, where the conqueror must die, 
And he is slain that wins the victory;* — 

but in this they only shared the fate of their 
glorious Leader, a fate which might naturally 
be expected to await all his followers. What 
gratitude do we not owe to those who fought 
such fearful battles to leave us in unhoped- 
for liberty and ease ?" 

" But honours of a more substantial nature 
than any rendered by man, awaited the faith- 
ful martyr. 'To each victor is promised,' 
says TertuUian, ' the tree of life and exemp- 
tion from the second death; the hidden 
manna with the white stone, and an unknown 
name ; the power of the iron rod, and the 
brightness of the morning star ; to be clothed 
in white ; not to be blotted out of the book 



70 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



of life ; to be made a pillar in the temple of 
G-od, inscribed mtb the name of his God 
and Lord, and of the heavenly Jerusalem ; 
and to sit down with the Lord on his throne.' 

" It is a question not easy of solution, what 
induced the Romans to persecute so violently 
the Christian sect. The conflagration of 
Rome, falsely attributed by Nero to their 
agency, was first made the pretext for pun- 
ishing them; but the accusation was not 
generally believed at the time, and the ex- 
treme severity of theii tortures produced a 
strong feeling in their favour. When we 
review the small portion of the history of 
the Church contained in the New Testament, 
from the time when Pilate washed his hands 
of our Saviour's blood, to the rescue of Paul 
from the Jews by the chief captain Lysias, 
we find in almost every instance in which 
the Christians came in contact with the Ro- 
mans, that the latter appeared as their just, 
though often lukewarm, protectors. 

" When Festus left Paul bound, it was to 
do the Jews a pleasure ; when Paul appealed 
to Caesar, it was to escape their malignity. 
It was a Roman who thought it unreason 
able to send a Christian prisoner without a 



PERSECUTION. 71 



crime imputed to him ; a Roman who, ap- 
preciating the eloquence and truth of the 
apostle, trembled at his preaching. It may, 
therefore, excite our surprise to find this 
equitable policy exchanged for the spirit of 
extermination which afterward appeared 
among the pagan Romans ; for no change in 
the early Christian church took place, which 
could render it ai^ object of reasonable aver- 
sion to its enemies.''* 

This intense malignity toward Christians, 
'' breathing out threatenings and slaughter," 
becomes yet more strange in contrast with 
the general national policy. They had not 
only allowed to every conquered people the 
free exercise of their religious rites, however 
absurd or grossly ofiensive to their own 
tastes, but they had allowed the shrines of 
foreign gods, with attending throngs of 
priests and noisy ceremonies, to be esta- 
blished, even under the shadow of the tem- 
ple of the Capitoline Jupiter. It seems, in- 
deed, as if they sometimes regarded with 
satisfaction the increase of the- catalogue of 
gods, as the Papist does an addition to the 

* Maitland's ** Church in the Catacombs,*' p. 84. 



72 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



calendar of saints, or any pagan ceremonies 
in the services of his worship, as is witnessed 
in heathen countries at the present day, 
wherever they have introduced their reli- 
gion. An earnest devotee, or a terrified 
profligate, seeking some other helper than 
He ^'upon whom only help is laid," — ^to 
abridge the pains of purgatory, or save from 
the eternal flames, — may look at the 1128 
names of canonized saints found in the Paris 
catalogue of 1847, with a special confidence 
that by purchasing the mediation of many 
of them he can certainly escape ; and we 
know that many old Romans in like man- 
ner added the worship of Egyptian or Syrian 
deities to that of their national gods, chang- 
ing as fear or fancy suggested. There is no 
improbability in the statement made by an 
early writer, (but not of the best historical 
authority,) that Tiberius proposed to the 
senate to instal our own Lord Jesus Christ 
as one of the gods of the national worship. 

What then was the reason that the reli- 
gion of love and purity so soon became the 
object of such peculiar hatred ? The answer 
is to be found in its central truths and in 
their immediate influence on every heart 



PERSECUTION. 73 



that received them. The Athenians, pass- 
ing by the place of their devotions, and see- 
ing an altar just erected, with this inscrip- 
tion, ''To the unknown God," regarded it 
as no denial of their own deities, but only 
the addition of yet one more to their "gods 
many and lords many." But the apostle 
proclaimed the One only living and true 
God, the sole object of religious reverence 
and obedience, and visiting with wrath all 
who acknowledged or worshipped any other. 
It was not the first time that monotheism, 
the system of one only supreme God, had 
been taught at Athens. A few philosophers 
had suggested it as possible, or reasoned 
about it as probable, without producing 
much excitement among the priesthood or 
the people. But the apostle's preaching 
went farther, testifying of " the loving-kind- 
ness of God our Saviour towards man;" 
how in the days of his flesh he went about 
doing good, lived to bless, and died to save ; 
and though again enthroned in glory, was 
still present as an almighty friend to every 
repenting sinner who would trust in him 
and obey him. Before such truths, when 
received into the heart of Greek or Roman, 



74 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



every otlior object of worship fell, maimed 
and shattered, as Dagon before the ark of 
God. Their language then was, " Whom 
have I in heaven but thee !*' '' Whether we 
live, we live to the Lord ; and whether we 
die, we die to the Lord; that living or 
dying we may be the Lord's.*' 

With the eyes thus opened, and the heart 
thus warmed, the new disciple went forth to 
persuade others to receive the same truths, 
and love and obey the same Saviour. If 
successful in his attempt to influence them, 
they, too, forsook the idol temples, and ut- 
tered their protest agaii^st the systems of 
falsehood and rites of superstition and pol- 
lution. Well might the many who "had 
all their wealth" by these systems fear this 
exclusive and intolerant faith, so destructive 
of them all. And in that century, as always, 
not the priests and craftsmen only, whose 
selfish interests were endangered, but " all 
that did evil hated the light." The old 
m}i;liologies and profane rites of Rome seem 
to us so absurd that we probably underrate 
the degree and intensity of their religious 
zeal. But the worshippers of cats at Pelu- 
sium were the most fierce zealots in Egypt, 



PERSECUTION. 75 



and ready to wreak a terrible vengeance 
upon one who should insult their deities. 

"We have thus alluded to the reasons 
for the bitterness of every old unbeliever 
against the gospel. In the Roman this was 
strengthened by the intimate connection 
always existing between his religion and 
the State. 

But, although hated and defamed by the 
majority of the people as soon as its claims 
were understood, it was not until about 
thirty years after our Saviour's death that 
the rulers became its savage persecutors. 

" The persecution of Nero, a. d. 64-65, 
(the first which the followers of the new faith 
suffered under the Koman emperors,) has 
been described by Tacitus, and alluded to 
by Suetonius and by Juvenal. The great 
classical historian, who was living in the 
time of Nero, may himself have been a wit- 
ness of the horrible scenes he describes. 
Juvenal was contemporary with Tacitus, and 
Suetonius wrote in the same age. 

" Every reader of history will remember 
that the tyrant Nero was suspected of having 
given orders, and prepared the means, for 
that terrible conflagration which reduced a 



76 THE CATACOMBS OP ROME. 



large portion of the city of Rome to cinders 
and ashes. 

" ' To put an end to this report/ says Ta^ 
citus, ' Nero laid the guilt, and inflicted the 
most cruel punishments, upon a set of peo- 
ple who were held in abhorrence for their 
crimes^ and called, by the vulgar, Christians. 
The founder of that name was Christ, who 
suffered death in the reign of Tiberius, un- 
der his procurator, Pontius Pilate. This 
pernicious superstition, thus checked for a 
while, broke out again and spread, not only 
over Judea, where the evil originated, but 
through Rome also, whither every thing bad 
upon the earth finds its way and is practised. 
" ' Some who confessed their sect, were fii^st 
seized, and afterward, by their information, 
a vast multitude were apprehended, who 
were convicted, not so much of the crime 
of burning Rome, as of hatred to mankind. 
Their sufferings at their execution were ag- 
gravated by insult and mockery ; for some 
were disguised in the skins of wild beasts, 
and worried to death by dogs ; some were 
crucified ; and others were wrapped in 
pitched shirts, and set on fire, when the day 
closed, that they might serve as lights to 



PERSECUTION. 77 



illuminate the night. Nero lent his own 
gardens for these executions, and exhibited 
at the same time a mock Circensian enter- 
tainment, being a spectator of the whole, in 
the dress of a charioteer, sometimes min- 
gling with the crowd on foot, and sometimes 
viewing the spectacle from his car.' 

"Thus were realized the foretellings of 
our Saviour. He had said to those disci- 
ples — ' They shall deliver you up to be 
afflicted, and shall kill you : and ye shall be 
hated of all nations for my name's sake.' 
' They shall lay hands on you, and persecute 
you.' 'The time cometh, that whosoever 
killeth you will think that he doeth God 
service. And these things will they do unto 
you, because they have not known the 
Father nor me. But these things have I 
told you, that when the time shall come, ye 
may remember that I told you of them.' 

"Under the cruel, brutal Domitian, who 
caused himself to be called ' God and Lord,' 
the second great persecution took place. 
This was a. d. 95. Other massacres followed 
in the reigns of Trajan, Adrian, and Severus. 
Under the successors of Severus there was a 

calm, which lasted from a. d. 197 to a. d. 

7* 



78 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



235 ; and, during these thirty-eight years, 
the Christians, who had hitherto been com- 
pelled to worship in sequestered places, were 
allowed to build churches and humble ora- 
tories, or places of prayer, in Rome and 
other cities. The next persecution took 
place under Maximinus, the crowned boor 
from Thrace, a. d. 235. Fifteen years later, 
Decius, the fierce barbarian from Pannonia, 
who had revolted against his master, and 
made himself emperor, rekindled the fire, 
which is said to have blazed more furiously 
and to a wider extent than ever it had done 
before. 

"The Diocletian persecution, commonly 
called the tenth and last of the great persecu- 
tions of the church under the emperors, 
was intended to extirpate the new faith, and 
to drown it in its own blood. It com- 
menced A. D. 303, at Nicomedia, in Asia 
Minor, where the emperor then held his 
court; and was provoked by the jealousies 
and fears of the unbelievers at the vast and 
still rapidly increasing numbers of the wor- 
shippers of Christ. The churches were 
broken open, the Scriptures were seized and 
burned, and a decree went forth that every 



PERSECUTION. 79 



Christian temple within the limits of the 
empire should be demolished to its very 
foundation. 

" From Mcomedia the persecution extend- 
ed to all parts of Asia Minor, Syria, Pa- 
lestine, Egypt, and the African coast; and, 
from the same original centre, it reached 
Byzantium, (now Constantinople,) Thes- 
salonica, Athens, Corinth, and Rome. If, 
under fear of torture, apostates were made, 
death was braved by many thousands, 
and by people in masses. In an unnamed 
town in Phrygia the inhabitants, at the 
approach of the unconverted troops of 
the emperor, threw themselves into their 
strong church. The soldiers set fire to the 
edifice ; but still the Christians would not 
come forth or utter one word of recantation, 
and — men, women, and children — they were 
all burned alive, and buried under the ruins 
and ashes of their temple. In other places 
the issues from the streets occupied by the 
Christians were barricaded and quite blocked 
up, and the houses were set on fire and 
burned with all in them ; in others, the be- 
lievers were bound together with ropes, and 



80 THE CATACOMBS OP ROME. 



were cast or driven into the sea by hun- 
dreds. 

"In Italy alone, the number of believers 
had so increased by this time, that the de- 
struction of them made a visible and fearfal 
void in the population ! Villages, towns, 
boroughs, and great cities are described as 
being strewed, and in places filled, with 
their dead bodies. From the Tiber to the 
Straits of Messina on the one side, and to 
the foot of the Alps on the other, there 
were, probably, few places but had their 
martyrs at this sad time. These were days 
for the Christians to flee again to deserts, 
and to dens, and to caves in the earth, and 
to call upon the crags of the mountains to 
topple over and hide them.''* 

We have no disposition to repeat the ter- 
rible descriptions of the sufierings of dif- 
ferent martyrs in these centuries of persecu- 
tion, when human ingenuity exhausted itself 
in attempts to invent new methods of tor- 
ture. But we will refer to one place wet 
with the blood of thousands of Christians, 
where their torture and death were made an 

* Mac Farlane's "Catacombs of Rome," p. 16-27. 



PERSECUTION 81 



exhibition for the amusement of an immense 
multitude of spectators. We allude to the 
Flavian amphitheatre, or the Coliseum, 
whioh has already been mentioned. From 
tJie engraving we here give of its present 
appearance, some idea may be formed of its 
beauty and grandeur when it was new and 
entire, at or near the close of the first cen- 
tury. It was in the form of an ellipse, its 
greater diameter being six hundred and 
fifteen feet, the lesser five hundred and ten 
feet, and its external circumference about 
one thousand seven hundred feet, or nearly 
six hundred yards. It was one hundred and 
sixty-four feet high, composed of four sto- 
ries, each story being a difierent order of 
architecture. It enclosed a large space, or 
arena, open to the sky ; there being, how- 
ever, an awning extended over the seats of 
the spectators, to protect them fi:om the sun 
and rain. The wild beasts, whose bloody 
conflicts were to afford amusement to the 
people, were kept in cells, which opened 
upon the arena by doors in the wall sur- 
rounding it. This wall, and the railing 
upon it, were so high that no wild beast, 
however active, could spring over it. Above 



X 



82 THE CATACOMBS OF HOME. 



tliis wall, in seats prepared expressly for 
them, sat the magistrates, senators, and other 
distinguished persons ; and from these seats 
a balcony projected out into the arena, from 
which the emperors viewed the spectacles. 
From this inner wall back to the outer wall, 
the whole vast space was lined with marble 
seats, rising above each other, sixty or more 
rows of the same sweeping around the whole 
circuit; and these were sufficiently capa- 
cious to hold from eighty to one hundred 
thousand spectators, and were often filled to 
overflowing. 

This immense amphitheatre was erected, 
and these multitudes assembled sometimes, 
to witness the contests of savage beasts, 
brought from all paiis of the world for that 
purpose, but more often the bloody conflicts 
of man with man, or of man with wild 
beasts, as the Spaniards of this day assem- 
ble to witness their national barbarous sport 
of ''bull-fighting.'' A large number of 
men, captives or criminals, were trained 
for this work of blood, by the name of gla- 
diators. 

When the persecution of the Christians 
became more fierce, the emperors and ma- 




Martyrdom of Ignatius. 



p. 83. 



PERSECUTION. §3 



gistrates conceived the idea of bringing 
them into the amphitheatre, where all who 
wished might enjoy the cruel sport of see- 
ing 'them torn Umb from limb by ferocious 
beasts. Sometimes, however, the beasts, 
more merciful than their masters, would 
not be made the executioners, and the gla- 
diator was compelled to descend into the 
arena and despatch the victim with his 
sword. In these cruel exhibitions, probably 
thousands of Christians died, while the im- 
mense throng of spectators, male and fe- 
male, raised a shout of fiendlike malice and 
triumphant exultation. 

Upon entering this amphitheatre at such 
a time as we have been describing, we 
should have witnessed a scene like that of 
the martyrdom of Ignatius. He had been 
a prominent Christian, and therefore the 
enemies of Christianity not only wished his 
death, but wished to see him die. He was 
brought to Eome from the distant city of 
Antioch. He was not reluctant to come, 
for he was one of those who are ready to 
"follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth." 

On his way to Rome he found time to 
write epistles to his flock at Rome, in which 



84 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



ne exhorted them to stand fast in their love 
to Christ, and not to weep for him, but 
rather rejoice that he was counted worthy to 
suffer for his Lord. 

When at last he was brought into the 
dreadful arena, and just before the lions 
were let loose upon him, he looked up into 
the faces of the vast multitude that filled 
the amphitheatre, and calmly said, "Ro- 
mans, spectators of this present scene, I am 
here, not because of any crime, nor to ab- 
solve myself from any charge of wickedness, 
hut to follow Grody by the love of whom I am 
impelled, and whom I long for irrepressibly. 
For I am his wheat, and must be ground by 
the teeth of beasts, that I may become his 
pure bread." 

It was in a similar way, but in a different 
city, that those noble females, Felicitas and 
Perpetua, suffered death for their Redeem- 
er's sake — ^who left their name and their 
praise in all the Christian world. 

Of the early Christian martyrs at Rome 
we have sufficient evidence that great num- 
bers were buried in the catacombs. But 
there are very few references to the persecu- 
tions, in the records found there. Of the 



PERSECUTION. 85 



many thousands whose graves are there, re- 
search has brought to hght comparatively 
few tablets containing certain evidence that 
they marked the resting-place of those who 
died by the hands of pagan violence. The 
larger portion of them, and those the most 
ancient, have no inscriptions, or merely the 
names rudely carved. The years of perse- 
cution, such as those of Nero, Decius, and 
Diocletian, were not the times for preparing 
costly monumental tablets. Silence also 
was necessary when a record of the truth 
would have caused outrage to the dead and 
danger to the sm^viving, as there is no doubt 
the catacombs were often visited by the pa- 
gans. 

There are, indeed, many tablets which 
have upon them sculptures, or paintings 
of the supposed instruments of torture by 
which they suffered, as hooks, pincers, and 
the like, some of which, more probably, 
are only representations of the implements 
used in their trade or labour. There 
are deposited, also, in the Museum of the 
Vatican, a variety of savage-looking iron 
instruments, which seem to have been made 

on purpose to tear the flesh from the body, 

8 



86 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



60 as to produce the keenest anguish possi- 
ble ; and which are said to have been taken 
from the catacombs, and to be the very in- 
struments by which one or another saint 
sufiered death. A palm branch, which ap- 
pears very often on the tablets, has been in- 
terpreted as the symbol of the martyr's 
triumph, founded on the vision of the glori- 
fied described by the prisoner of Patmos. 
This would have been more in accordance 
with the spirit and temper of the early 
Christians than engraved words of maledic- 
tion or instruments of torture. The cheer- 
fulness with which they regarded death, 
even in its most terrible forms, when en- 
dured for their Master's sake, and their gen- 
tle charity, even to their fiercest persecutors, 
are manifest in all that has come down to 
us. Their constant prayer was that their 
enemies might be brought, by the same 
grace bestowed on themselves, to receive 
and love the faith which they were then 
seeking to destroy. 

But let us read a few inscriptions, or epi- 
taphs, which connect the sleepers in the 
catacombs directly with the persecutions. 
Here is one: 



PERSECUTION. 87 



<' PEIMITITIS, IN PEACE; AETER MANY TORMENTS, 
A MOST VALIANT MARTYR. HE LIVED ABOUT 
THIRTY-EIGHT YEARS. HIS WIPE RAISED THIS TO 
HER DEAREST HUSBAND, THE WELL-DESERVING." 

The following two are of a later date, but 
in the same spirit : 

"PAULUS WAS PUT TO DEATH IN TORTURES, IN 
ORDER THAT HE MIGHT LIVE IN ETERNAL BLISS " 

««CLEMENTIA, TORTURED, DEAD. SLEEPS: WILL 
RISE." 

There is one record that seems to show 
that the martyr was first compelled to drink 
poison, and this proving ineffectual, he was 
despatched with a sword. The inscription 
is upon the outside of a cup, which was 
taken from his tomb. It runs thus : 

**THE DEADLY DRAUGHT DARED NOT PRESENT 
TO CONSTANS THE CROWN WHICH THE STEEL WAS 
PERMITTED TO OFFER." ' 

A few specify the time when the sufferer 
died, or the emperor during whose reign 
he suffered. 

Here is one, of which we will give a/a(?- 



€8 



THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



simile of the original, the letters being some- 
what abridged. It may serve as a fair spe- 
cimen of a great number. 




mi. 





o W U ///I 



ttlWFJC 



E-P-S 




Pduur 



It is translated thus : 



<<Lannus, Christ's Martyr, rests here. He suffered 
under Diocletian." 

The letters E. P. S. upon the tablet stand 
for these words, et poeteris suis, "and for 
his posterity," showing that this tomb had 
been legally secured to his family. It ^vill 
be noticed that these letters are manifestly 



PERSECUTION. 89 



of later inscription It is probable that 
after the time of peril to the church had 
passed, by the accession of Constantine, his 
family obtained the privilege of sharing the 
consecrated tomb. 

Although the following inscription does 
not contain any date, we learn from other 
sources that Gordianus suffered in the brief 
persecution under Julian. 

'♦ HERE LIES GORDIANUS, DEPUTY OF GAUL, WHO 
WAS EXECUTED FOR THE FAITH. WITH ALL HIS 
FAMILY: THEY REST IN PEACE. THEOPHILA, A 
HANDMAID, SET UP THIS." 

Here is another : 



I 



TEMPORE ADRIANI IMPERATORIS MA- 
RIVS ADOLESCENS DVX MILITVM QVI 
\f^ SATIS VIXIT DVM VITAM PRO CHO 
' CVM SANGUINE CONSUNSIT IN PACE 
TANDEM QVIEVIT BENE MERENTES 
CVM LACRIMIS ET METV POSVERVNT. 
I. D. VI. 




**In Christ. In the time of the Emperor Adrian, Ma- 
rius, a young military officer, who lived long enough, as 
he shed his blood for Christ, and died in peace. Hia 
friends set up this with tears and in fear." 

8* 



90 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



This proves, not only that Marius himself 
died a martyr, but also that his surviving 
friends were themselves in danger at the 
time when this tablet was placed there. 

Prudentius, a Spanish Christian poet, 
visited Rome in the fourth century, and 
thus describes the appearance of some of 
the tablet stones in the catacombs at that 
time : 

"We have seen, in the city of Romulus, 
innumerable remains of saints. You ask, 
Valerian, what epitaphs are chiselled upon 
the tombs, and what are the names of those 
buried ? — A question difficult for me to an- 
swer, so great a host of the just did the im- 
pious rage of the heathen sweep away when 
Trojan Rome worshipped her country's 
gods. 

"Many sepulchres, marked with letters, 
display the name of the martyr, or some 
anagram. There are, also, dumb stones, 
closing silent tombs, which tell only the 
number buried within. So that we know 
how many human bodies lie in the heap, 
though we read no name belonging to them. 
I remember finding that sixty were buried 
under one mound, whose names Christ 



PERSECUTION. 91 



alone presei^es, as those of his peculiar 
Mends." 

Here is a specimen of a tablet like some 
referred to by Prudentius : 

**Marcella and five hundred and fifty martyrs of 
Christ.'' 

There are in some portions of the cata- 
combs deep pits, which were the graves of 
many. "Whether this tablet was placed 
near such a pit we cannot ascertain. It 
may have been erected only as a brief me- 
morial of so many Christians who had suf- 
fered martyrdom in Rome under one empe- 
ror, or at one time, whose bones may have 
been deposited in different cells, or even in 
different cemeteries. 

We have transcribed enough of these 
records to show the relation between the 
persecutions which occurred upon the sur- 
face and these places beneath, where the 
surviving friends of the martyrs laid away 
their remains to their peaceful sleep. 



We prefer to separate from the rest of the 
chapter a brief notice of a subject to which 



92 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



we have alluded, wliich is necessarily con- 
nected with our inquiries as to . the graves 
of the victims of persecution : — ^we mean the 
deep pits often used for the burial of the 
poor by the Romans, and still used by the 
brutal government of Naples. There is no 
doubt that the bodies of hundreds of Chris- 
tian martyrs were committed to these horri- 
ble receptacles, there to lie undistinguished 
till the earth shall give up all her dead. 
They were called "puticuh," from their re- 
semblance to wells. 

"Into such deep shafts the ancient Ro- 
mans threw the dead bodies of their slaves 
and malefactors, by scores and by hundreds. 
Such are found in the catacombs. Most of 
these deep cavities are closed, but some of 
those which remain open present, at the dis- 
tance of a few feet from the floor of the 
crypts, a horrible, compact, condensed mass 
of human skulls and bones, all white or 
grayish, and looking as if calcined. The 
Romans threw quicklime into these fright- 
ful pits, to hasten the destruction of the 
bodies. Precisely the same practices pre- 
vail at Naples in the well-known Campo 
Santo, (or 'holy field,') the cemetery of 



PERSECUTION. 93 



the poor, There, a large quadrangular 
place is enclosed by stone walls; the soil 
underneath is tufa ; in this are sunk three 
hundred and sixty-five pozzi, or great graves, 
one for every day in the year ; the entrance 
into these death-chambers is on a level with 
the ground, and narrow, like the mouth of 
a well. All the poor who expire in the 
hospitals, and all the paupers who die in 
the populous city on one day, and have 
none to bury them, are carried to this spot, 
and thrown pell-mell into one of the pits, 
^vithout a rag to cover them ! I have 
counted in one of these pits as many as 
fifteen bodies thus disposed of, and there 
were others beneath which I could not see. 
At sunset a quantity of lime is thrown into 
the pit, and the mouth of it is shut up by a 
closely fitting stone slab ; that sepulchre 
tlien remains undisturbed and unopened 
until the following year, and the one next 
to it, or marked next in date, is opened on 
the morrow morning to receive its annual 
supply of dead. At the expiration of the 
year of rest, nothing is left in the pit but 
lime, skulls, and bones ; and when its turn 
comes round again, when the closing stone 



94 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



is rem oved, and its hideous maw re-opened, 
there is room, and to spare, for the recep- 
tion of all the poor, friendless dead that 
day. It is then again shut up until the fol- 
lowing year, and so, in succession, year 
after year. 

" The number of the separate grieves in 
one of the larger of the Roman catacombs, as 
that of St. Sebastian, taking all the crypts 
and the excavations under excavations, is 
enormous ; and the amount of the dead de- 
posited there dejB.es rational calculation. 
But who could count the contents of those 
deep and horrible pits in them, filled almost 
to the brim?" 




EEFUS^E FROM PERSECUTION. 95 



CHAPTER VL 

THE CATACOMBS A REFUGE FROM 
PERSECUTION. 

It is reported of the cruel Nero, that 
when he was himself a wretched fugitive 
from the fury of his enraged subjects, he 
was advised to secrete himself in the cata- 
combs; and that he replied that it would 
be quite soon enough to go there after he 
was dead. 

Rienzi, who was a revolutionary patriot 
of Rome in the fourteenth century, but 
who failed in his attempt to restore liberty 
to his country, being also advised to take 
refuge from his pursuers in the catacombs, 
quoted the answer of Nero, saying that he 
would not go under the ground while he 
was living. But there were times when 
these cheerless excavations gave shelter to 
many of the living as well as of the dead. 



96 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



In the Epistle to the Hebrews, xi. 38, 
the writer, in speaking of the faithful of 
old, who had suffered persecution, says, 
^' They wandered in deserts and in moun- 
tains, and in dens and caves of the earth.'* 
David and Elijah fled to such places of 
refuge from the violence of Jewish kings ; 
and thousands in this way escaped from 
death during the terrible persecution by 
Antiochus Epiphanes, the Sjaian tyrant. 
The words of the apostle were an exact de- 
scription of what the Christians would soon 
suffer. During the successive persecutions 
which they endured for several centuries, we 
learn, from various sources, that they often 
took refuge in the catacombs — in these arti- 
ficial dens and caves of the earth. They 
would probably be well acquainted with all 
these intricate passages under ground, as 
many of their number had been employed 
there, and others had often visited fellow- 
disciples who were thus emploj^ed. They 
would also there be specially secure from 
their pursuers, as no one could possibly 
trace his way through these labyrinths un- 
less he had himself been employed in them 
or had guides accustomed to them. Wliat- 



REFUSE FROM PERSECUTION. 97 



ever, therefore, his hatred to the Christians, 
he would be slow to follow them into re- 
treats where he might lose his own way, 
and, in consequence, his life. 

Hence, in times of peril, the catacombs 
would be the most natural retreat of the 
fugitive Christians, and also their safest 
asylum. 

Hear what a writer of the fourth century 
says of the entrance to one of these excava- 
tions in his day : — 

" Among the cultivated grounds, not far 
outside the walls, lies a deep cavern with 
dark recesses. A descending path, with 
wmding steps, leads through the dim turn- 
ings, and the daylight, entering by the 
mouth of the cavern, somewhat illumines 
the first part of the way. But the darkness 
grows deeper as we advance, till we meet 
with openings cut in the roof of the pas- 
sages, admitting light from above," &c. 

Into such dark and mysterious passages 
as these the enemies of the Christian would 
not be over anxious to pursue him. Hither 
then he would flee, and wait till the storm 
was overpast. Bitter persecutions did not 
generally continue long in the same place ; 



98 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



and frequently, while the storm was raging, 
it was only the prominent members of the 
church whose lives were sought by the per- 
secutors. So that while these were secreted 
beyond the reach of the persecutor, their 
Christian friends could easily find them, 
and furnish them with necessary food. 

And there were springs, or wells of water, 
in dififerent parts of the catacombs, some of 
which still remain. In the time of Diocle- 
tian, one man is said to have lived eight 
years in the catacombs. The early history 
of the church is filled with traditions of per- 
sons, both men and women, who lived for a 
longer or a shorter period under ground. 
Some of them were traced by the persecu- 
tors, and suffered martyrdom there. It is 
said that, in one case, a large number of 
Christians had assembled in a remote 
branch of these caverns, when their pur- 
suers, having learned where they were, cru- 
elly walled up the only passage leading to 
them ; and they all perished together, by 
the lingering death of famine. 

The many traditions current on this pomt 
leave no doubt of the fact of their frequent- 
ly taking refuge in these subterranean re- 



REFUGE FROM PERSECUTION. 99 



cesses At first the magistrates may not 
have known that Christians secreted them- 
selves here ; but, in later times, they were 
perfectly aware of it, for we find still in ex- 
istence the edicts of persecuting emperors 
forbidding the Christians to assemble there, 
as well as the later edicts of other emperors, 
who were favourable to the Christians, per- 
mitting them to return thither at their plea- 
sure. 

There is one afiecting epitaph found in 
the catacombs, that may be introduced here. 
It refers to a persecution that occurred 
about the middle of the second century. 
The epitaph itself may have been composed 
somewhat later, and placed over the grave 
of one who was known to have suffered at 
the time alluded to, as, at this day, a new 
monument is frequently erected over the 
grave of a person who died fifty or a hun- 
dred years ago. The reader will notice in 
it one brief clause which proves, not only 
that the persecuted frequently took refuge 
in the catacombs and even worshipped 
there, but also that the persecutors some- 
times followed them even into these deep 
retreats. 



100 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



"In Christ. Alexander is not dead, but lives above 
the stars, and his body rests in this tomb. He ended 
his life under the Emperor Antonine, who, although he 
might have foreseen that great benefit would result from 
his services, rendered to him hatred instead of favour. 
For while on his knees, and about to sacrifice to the 
true God, he was led away to execution. Oh sad times ! 
in which, among sacred rites and prayers, not even in 
caverns could we be safe. What can be more wretched 
than such a life ? and what than such a death ? where 
they cannot be buried by their friends and relations ! — 
At length they sparkle in heaven." 

Another short sentence ends the inscrip- 
tion, but it is, probablj^ by some mistake of 
the sculptor, quite unintelligible. 

In the frontispiece of this volume is a 
sketch of one of the interior passage-ways 
of the catacombs. The reader will observe, 
on the left, tiers of recesses from the floor 
to the roof of the passage-way, each recess 
made to contain one body, or more. Be- 
yond these two tiers another passage 
branches off to the left, upon the right-hand 
side of which will be observed two similar 
recesses. Still farther on is a party of 
visiters coming toward us. Immediately in 
front of them, and on the floor of the main 
passage, is an opening and stairway down 



REFUGE FROM PERSECUTION. 101 



into a still lower story of the catacombs. 
From this a wild-looking person is coming 
up with torch in hand. Perhaps he is one 
of the original workmen here, a fossor, and 
his look of surprise may be caused by his 
meeting unexpectedly with these Roman 
visiters from above ground. 

This engraving may help us to under- 
stand how persons who were well acquainted 
with all these passage-ways could escape 
from pursuers ; and how the pursuers would 
be in danger either of being lost in these 
dark and winding avenues, or of stumbling 
unexpectedly into one of those openings, 
through the floor, into the dismal vaults be- 
neath. Many of the excavations have been 
closed, so that some of the retreats of the 
earliest Christians are now inaccessible. 
But in order to give the reader a vivid idea 
of the numerous and intricate windings of 
the subterranean passages still open, and 
also of the danger of visiting them without 
a guide, we will introduce here the version 
by an English author of a part of a French 
poem by Abbe de Lille, founded on the ad- 
ventures of M. Robert, an artist, who had 
ventured rashly alone into the catacombs 
9* 



• 
102 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



** Eager to know the secrets of the place. 
The holy cradle of our Christian race, 
A youthful artist threads these inmost cells, 
And lowest crypts, where darkness ever dwells. 
No friend to cheer him, and no guide to lead, 
He boldly trusts a flambeau and a thread. 
Brave and alone he cherishes his light, 
And trusts the clue will lead him back aright. 
Onward he goes along the low-arched caves. 
Crowded with martyrs' relics and their graves ; 
Through palaces of death, by countless tombs. 
Through awful silence, and through thick'ning glooms ; 
Yet pausing oft, as walls and slabs impart 
Some lesson of the earliest Christian art, 
Or some black chasm warns him to beware. 
And choose his steps, and trim his torch with care. 
Onward he goes, nor takes a note of time, 
Impell'd, enchanted, in this dismal clime; 
Thrilling with awe, but yet untouched by fear, 
He passes on from dreary unto drear ! 
The crypts diverge, the labyrinths are cross'd, — 
He will return. Alas ! his clue is lost ! 
Dropp'd from his hand, while tracing out an urn, 
The faithless string is gone, and dimly burn 
The flambeau's threads. He gropes, but gropes in yain, 
Recedes, advances, and turns back again ; 
He halts, he moves, he thinks, he rushes on. 
But only finds that issue is there none. 
Crypt tangles crypt, a perfect network weaves 
This gloomy labyrinth of horrid caves. 
He mutters to himself, he shouts, he calls, 
And echo answers from a hundred walls. 
That awful echo doubles his dismay. 
That grimmer darkness leads his head astray. 



REFUaE FROM PERSECUTION. 103 



Cold at his heart ! His breath, now quick, now slow 

Sounds in that silence like a wail of wo ! 

Oh ! for one cheering ray of heaven's bright sun, 

Which, through long hours, his glorious course hath run 

Since he came here ! And now his torch's light 

Flickers, expires in smoke — and all is night ! 

Thick-coming fancies trouble all his sense. 

He strives, but vainly strives, to drive them thence ; 

Cleaves his dried tongue unto the drier roof. 

Nor word, nor breath hath he at his behoof; 

That dying torch last shone upon a grave. 

That grave his tomb, for who shall help and save ? 

Alone ! Yet not alone, for phantoms throng 

His burning brain, and chase the crypts along. 

And other spectres rush into the void — 

Blessings neglected, leisure misemploy'd, 

And passions left to rise and rage at will, 

And faults, called follies, but were vices still; 

And wild caprice, and words at random spoken. 

By which kind hearts were wounded, though not broken, 

Bootless resolves, repentance late and vain, — 

All these and more come thundering through his brain ; 

Condensing in one single moment rife. 

The sins of all his days, the history of his life ; 

And death at hand ! Not that which heroes hail, 

On battle-field, when 'Victory!' swells the gale, 

And love of country, Glory standing by, 

Make it a joy and rapture so to die ! 

But creeping death, slow, anguish'd, and obscure, 

A famish'd death, no mortal may endure ! 

But this his end ! our prison'd artist's fate, 

He young, he joyous, and but now elate 

With every hope that warms the human breast, 

Before experience tells that life's a jest; 



104 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



Full of his art, of projects, and of love, 

Must he expire, "while creeping things above, 

On the earth*s surface, in the eye of day, 

Revel in life, nor feel this drear dismay ? 

But hark ! a step ? Alas, no step is there ! 

But see ! a glimmering light ? Oh ! foul despair ! 

No ray pervades this darkness, grim and rare. 

He staggers, reels, and falls, and falling prone, 

Grapples the ground where he must die alone ; 

But in that fall touches his outstretch'd hand 

That precious clue the labyrinth can command ; 

Lost long, but now regain'd ! happy wight. 

Gather thy strength, and haste to life and light! 

And up he rises, quick, but cautious grown, 

And threads the mazes by that string alone ; 

Comes into light, and feels the fanning breeze, 

Sees the bright stars, and drops upon his knees ; 

His first free breath is uttered in a prayer. 

Such as none say but those who've known despair ! 

And never were the stars of heaven so sheen 

Except to those who'd dwelt where he had been ; 

And never Tiber, rippling through the meads. 

Made music half so sweet among its reeds ; 

And never had the earth such rich perfume 

As when from him it chased the odour of the tomb !" 

Another narrative of terror was related, 
on good authority, to an English writer on 
the subject of the catacombs. It was the 
story of a young French officer, in 1798, 
when the French republican army occupied 
the city. 



EBFUGE FROM PERSECUTION. 105 



Under the influence of a reckless defiance 
of the sacred memories of the place, and of 
a mad carouse with his companions over 
their wine in one of the apartments supposed 
to have been often used for the celebration 
of the eucharist, he rushed from them into 
the inner cavern, and was lost in its dark- 
ness. For a time his courage was sustained 
by the system of atheism and materialism 
common at that time to almost all his na- 
tion. But, as the night was prolonged, 
that courage gave way to the most fearful 
imaginations. 

'' The following morning the young ofiicer 
was found by the guides in a state of stupor 
and unconsciousness. He was carried into 
Eome, and consigned to his friends and to 
the military hospital. The young man suf- 
fered a brain fever of the most violent and 
worst kind. He raved on his sick-bed, 
' Take away those skulls ! Remove those 
horrible bones ! Shut up those graves, or 
deprive me of sight!' Every object con- 
verted itself in his eye to a skeleton or a 
spectre. Medicine and skilful treatment 
and assiduous care, slowly restored him 
to reason and to health ; but from that 



106 



THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



time forward lie was an altered, serious, 
reverential man. He had interred his 
last scofl* and impious jest in the Roman 
catacomb. He could no longer laugh at 
death, or that which is beyond this brief 
and troublous life. The awe which had 
penetrated him, and overthrown his reason, 
did not all depart with the restoration of his 
reasoning faculties. He burned the infidel 
works which had been his favourite vo- 
lumes, and betook himself to the study of 
very diflerent books. His comrades rallied 
him, but they could not change him Some 
seven years after, when killed in battle in 
Calabria, a copy of the Evangelists was 
found in his pocket.'' 




PLACE OF WORSHIP. 107 



CHAPTER Vn. 

THE CATACOMBS AS A PLACE OF WORSHIP. 

The Christians would still worship their 
Lord and Master, although they were hid- 
den away in '' caverns and dens of the 
earth." Why should they not? True, they 
had exchanged a comfortable home in the 
sweet light and pure air for a very dismal 
one in the ground ; but this change of place 
did not at all affect their own hearts, or the 
excellence of Him whom their hearts loved 
better than life itself. 

Did not Daniel pray in the lions' den as 
he had done in his chamber ? Did not Paul 
and Silas sing praises as heartily and ac- 
ceptably while in the prison at Philippi as 
when they walked freely up to the splendid 
temple at Jerusalem ? 

The soul that truly loves and fears the 
Lord, will worship him cheerfully and reicu- 



108 THE CATACOMBS OF BOME. 



larly everywhere. A true Christian may 
change his abode and his business, and ai; 
the circumstances about him may change, 
but he will ahvays say, as pious David sUid, 
'' God, my heart is fixed : F wdll sing and 
give praise." 

It will be remembered that in the epitaph 
upon the tomb of the martyr Alexander, 
which we have copied in a previous connec 
tion, there is evidence that he was appre- 
hended in some part of the catacombs, while 
upon his knees and about to worship the 
true God. It may be that he was then alone ; 
but the probability is that others were then 
engaged with him in the religious services. 
Even by those who were not driven from 
their homes by persecutors, resort was made 
to these places for social w^orship. The 
various edicts of the emperors prove this. 
V^alerian, in the third century, published an 
edict forbidding the Christians to assemble 
in the catacombs. His successor, Gallienus, 
revoked that edict, and restored to them 
the privilege. 

A while afterward the cruel persecutor 
Maximian again took away from the Chris- 
tians this liberty, by a new edict, an'i 



PLACE OF WORSHIP. 109 



finally, Constantine restored it permanently 
to them. 

There were, at a very early period, places 
m the catacombs which were called chapels. 
At first they were of the simplest form pos- 
sible — a mere enlargement of the vault or 
passage-way, both in width and in height. 
These were lighted, sometimes by apertures 
from the roof to the surface of the ground, 
and sometimes by lamps hung upon the 
walls around. The walls of the chapel on 
all sides were full of niches, or recesses, in 
which the remains of their friends were 
sleeping, while the living were there praising 
the Lord for whom some of those friends 
had died as martyrs. 

It must have been impressive and aflect- 
ing to the early Christians thus to worship 
their divine Master so near to the tombs of 
many of his faithful followers, who had 
gladly laid down their lives for his sake. 
How strong oftentimes are our emotions 
when we stand by the grave of some great 
and good man who died in the service of 
Christ! And how would our hearts burn 
within us in a church which was surrounded 
10 



110 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



on all sides by the graves and epitaphs ot 
such Christians ! 

We can, however, but faintly conceive 
how the early Christians felt, who had fled 
from persecution, when, with perhaps a few 
who came secretly with food and sympathy, 
they assembled in the chapels of the cata- 
combs to worship Christ. Probably purer 
worship or more acceptable prayer never 
ascended to heaven from the most magnifi- 
cent cathedral, than went up from those 
dark and uncomfortable caverns. God 
looks at the heart of the worshipper, not at 
the place in which he worships. 

After all persecution had ceased, and 
there was no longer a necessity for the 
Christians to resort thither for worship, they 
still continued to meet there at certain sea- 
sons. For instance, when the anniversai'y 
of some distinguished martyr's death oc- 
curred, his friends sometimes kept that 
anniversary by a religious service held near 
his tomb. This habit, and the state of feel- 
ing which it promoted, led to some changes 
in the catacombs. K a celebrated martyr 
had been buried in or near one of the chapels 
spoken of, then, as visiters on these occa 



PLACE OF WORSHIP. Ill 



sio^.^ multiplied, and their wealth or zeal 
on t.Uis Babject increased, they sometimes 
enlarged the chapel, and adorned it, per- 
haps, xvith more elegant and expensive 
tablets &nd monuments. Some of these 
chapels were made quite large, and highly 
ornamented; and were furnished with al- 
most all the conveniences of a church above 
ground. In such places for many years 
Christians from Rome and its neighbour- 
hood were accustomed to meet and hold 
their love-feasts and celebrate the Lord's 
supper. 

The church in Smyrna, in the second 
century, after they had buried their mar- 
tyred bishop, the venerable Polycarp, who 
had been a pupil of the apostle John, thus 
write : — '' We buried the body of Polycarp in 
a suitable place, and there, when we are 
able, we shall meet with joy and exultation ; 
and may the Lord grant us to celebrate the 
birth-day of his martyr, both in memory of 
those who have already fought, and for the 
exercise and preparation of those who have 
yet to fight!" 

The graves of distinguished maityrs were 
often visited privately by individuals who 



112 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



wished to revive their own piety by standing 
by the side of the ashes of the great and 
good. Thus Prudentius, of whom we have 
already spoken, in giving an account of his 
visit to the catacombs, and especially to the 
tomb of Hj^ppolytus, a martyr of the pre- 
ceding century, says, " There have I prayed 
prostrate, sick with the corruptions of soul 
and body, and obtained relief." 

We sum up our remarks on this point in 
the language of another. 

" Every persecution contributed its stock 
of saints and martyrs to the subterranean 
tombs; and the, catacombs, gradually en- 
larged by the Christians, assumed the cha- 
racter of a 'holy land,* inferior in sanctity 
only to Mount Calvary and the spot which 
had contained the tomb of Christ. When 
Constantino embraced the cross, struck 
down the gods of Greece and Rome, and 
changed the religion of the empire, these 
dark crypts were regarded as the centres of 
light and holy inspiration. They were fre- 
quented by the great and powerful, who 
took a pride, and believed that they gained 
a spiritual benefit, in decorating the tombs 
of the early martyrs and first confessors, 



PLACE OF WORSHIP. 113 



and in clearing out and cleansing those 
vast recesses of the dead." 

Another writer upon the same subject 
says, "In the year 314, a Christian empe- 
ror gave to the church, as her right, those 
caverns which had so long been her refuge. 
Now commenced a new use of the cata- 
combs. Where the Christians had formerly 
gone to preserve life, where they had laid 
the remains of their kindred, where their 
honoured martyrs lay awaiting the coming 
of their Lord, and where all the traditions 
of their past history had their most hal- 
lowed associations, they naturally betook 
them to meditate. Nor is there one of 
us who would not have loved to stand 
and muse in those dormitories of the faith- 
ful dead. We feel even as to the spot 
where we have buried one friend, the spot 
where we have looked down into an open 
grave till we felt as if our own hearts were 
at its bottom and growing cold, that we 
should love to go there again and meditate. 
And if so, how strongly would the Chris- 
tians of Rome be drawn toward the tombs 
of their fathers in the faith, toward the 
scenes of saintly patience and glorious mar- 

10* 



114 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



tyrdom ! * * * Here they were wont not 
only to meditate individually, but also to 
meet, especially round the tombs of mar- 
tyrs, to celebrate the love-feast or agape^ 
and even to partake of the eucharist. This 
practice naturally, and perhaps inevitably, 
led to abuses and brought scandal on the 
faith." 

" The representations of these solemn 
feasts were often repeated, in both sculp- 
tures and paintings, showing how general 
in that age was the custom. It was found- 
ed certainly on an unworldly idea, and one 
which Christianity alone could have ori- 
ginated. Look then at such an assembly, 
as, one by one, in silence and by stealth, they 
gather at their place of meeting. It is in the 
Eternal City, which is crimsoned with the 
blood of the earliest martyrs, and the name 
of Jesus of Nazareth is a forbidden sound 
within its walls. But scattered through its 
crowded thousands — even ^vithin sight of 
its Pantheon of gods — are the true-hearted, 
and joyfully they turn to their place of wor- 
ship when the appointed time has come. 
Secretly they pass the gates, and steal across 
the Esquiline Hill, and descending into the 



PLACE OF WORSHIP. 115 



catacombs, thread their way through its nar- 
row passages. The barriers of race and 
country — of rank and caste — are broken 
down, and for the first time in the world's 
history all are brethren. The swarthy Syrian 
is there — ^the slave indeed of an earthly mas- 
ter — yet here a freeman in Christ Jesus and 
a brother beloved for the faith's sake. Beside 
him is the intellectual Athenian, but he 
has learned a nobler philosophy than that 
of Greece, and found that the truest wisdom 
was to bow at the foot of the cross. And 
there, too, is the Jemsh priest, shocked no 
longer by the presence of "they of the un- 
circumcision," but overcoming the narrow 
exclusiveness of his race, prepared to wel- 
come the Jewish converts around him as in- 
heritors of the same promises. It is an hour 
with them of holy joy, when the trials of the 
outward world are forgotten, its cares thrown 
aside, and their souls strengthened for that 
coming future in which they know not what 
shall await them. And when they part, 
they realize that before they meet again, 
Rome among them may win the crown of 
martyrdom." 



116 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



CHAPTER Vm. 

THE CATACOMBS AS A CEMETERY FOR THE 
CHRISTIANS. 

When Christianity was introduced into 
the Roman Empire, it was, as we have already 
saidjthe general custom of the Romans to burn 
the bodies of their dead. The few remains 
of bones and ashes were preserved in small 
urns, which were called ''cinerary urns.*' 
They were usually deposited in small under- 
ground chambers constructed for the pur- 
pose, which were often in the garden or 
courts of dwelling-houses. From the re- 
semblance which this singular apartment 
bore to a dove-cote, it received the name 
columbarium^ from columha^ a dove. Some 
of them were large enough to hold three 
hundred urns. 

An American traveller thus describes 
one which he visited but a few years ago : — 
"There were few things in Rome more cu- 



CEMETERY FOR CHRISTIANS. 117 



nous than one, seldom mentioned by travel- 
lers, called the Columbaria, or Dove-Cotes. 
These were places for interment, not for 
the bodies, but for the ashes of the dead. 
They were places dug in the ground, per- 
haps twenty or twenty-five feet square, and 
it may be sixteen or twenty feet deep. 
The sides are built up with shelves, and 
these shelves are partitioned off into small 
compartments, and each compartment con- 
tains a small marble or stone chest or urn. 
In the centre of the vault there is a square 
block, leaving a fi-ee passage between this 
and the outer walls, and this too is lined 
with shelves and compartments of the same 
description. These small chests or urns con- 
tain the ashes of the dead after their bodies 
had been burnt, as was formerly their custom. 
On one row of the shelves was inscribed 

C-ESAR'S HOUSEHOLD. S 

I put my hand into one of the urns, and 
took up a handful of the burnt bones, pro- 
bably of some of the inmates of the palace." 



118 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



Thus were the dead usually disposed of 
among the ancient pagan Romans. But the 
minds of the Christians revolted from this 
practice. Those of Jewish or Greek origin 
would regard it with hereditary dislike, and 
the native disciples would soon share all 
their feelings on this subject. They knew 
with how much care, in former times, the 
bodies of Abraham and Sarah, Jacob and 
Joseph and Lazarus had been bm^ied — and 
their Saviour's body also — and thus would 
they bury their own beloved ones, and thus 
be themselves buried, when their own change 
should come. 

From the inscription already quoted from 
the tomb of the martyr Alexander, we learn 
that he was put to death in one of these 
subterranean passages, whither he had fled 
for safety, or for worship. Nothing then 
was more natm-al than that he should be 
buried there. His murderers would not care 
to drag the corpse of a hated Christian above 
gi'ound. The martyr's friends would hasten 
to perform the last offices of affection for it, 
by giving it a decent burial where it would 
rest undisturbed till the morning of the re- 
surrection, ^o place would be so convenient 



CEMETERY FOR CHRISTIANS. 119 



or SO safe as one of these subterranean cham- 
bers. And of those who were put to death 
elsewhere, many were undoubtedly brought 
down to rest in the same secure place. 

In the midst of the most cruel persecutions, 
the Romans were generally Tvilling that the 
friends of the martyrs should dispose of their 
bodies as they pleased. 

As in the case of the &st martyr Stephen, 
his murderers allowed devout men to cany 
his body to the burial, so pagan cruelty 
was oftentimes satisfied with taking the 
lives of prominent Christians, and then 
giving up their mangled corpses to those 
humbler believers whom they did not care 
to kill. 

At the same time there is no probability 
that funeral ceremonies would have been 
allowed in any suitable place above ground. 
For those rites, the place of interment must 
have been secluded and obscure. All this 
favours the ti^uth of the tradition that veiy 
many of the bodies of the Chiistian martyrs 
were taken to the catacombs for burial. 

TVTiat was at first done from necessity, 
would afterward be done from choice ; and 
they would prefer to bury their friends here, 



120 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



where so many who had abeady laid down 
their hves fo? Christ were buried. 

When one who had been an eminent 
Christian, and whose name and praise were 
in all the churches, suffered martyrdom, 
the Christians were especially anxious to get 
possession of his remains, and to give them 
an honourable burial. Their zeal on this sub- 
ject had probably some connection with the 
common heathen notion that the want of 
the rites of sepulture affected unfavourably 
the condition of the spirit. It certainly was 
carried to an unmse excess. The Roman 
Christians sometimes even incurred great 
risk of life, in order to obtain the body or 
fragments of the body of some revered and 
beloved officer of the church. Hence it 
was that Ignatius, when about to be thrown 
to the wild beasts in the amphitheatre, 
prayed that the beasts "would make a grave 
for him, and leave nothing of his body," so 
that his Christian friends should have no 
trouble or danger to encounter in regard to 
his burial. 

The number of Christians buried in the 
catacombs must have been very great, if, as 
these reasons induce us to believe, for more 



CEMETRTCY FOR CHRISTIANS. 121 



than three hundred years, the Christian po- 
pulation of Rome were generally buried 
here. During some portion of this pe- 
riod, as for instance, the reign of the per- 
secutor Decius, it was estimated that forty 
thousand of the population were Chris- 
tians. 

A Christian traveller, who visited the city 
in the latter part of the fourth century, ex- 
claims, "It is scarcely known how full Rome 
is of buried saints — ^how richly the metro- 
politan soil abounds in holy sepulchres !" 

The space thus occupied can be measured 
only by miles, or by thousands of acres, in 
extent. Different portions of the catacombs 
sooner or later had different names assigned 
them ; and these names were generally taken 
from some Christian whom history or legend 
recorded as buried in that portion. Thus 
we have, even to this day, the Cemetery of 
St. Sebastian — of St. Agnes — of St. Priscilla 
— of Balbina, &c. &c. ; though some of these 
saints may be apocryphal, and if they ever 
lived and died, it is by no means certain that 
they were buried in the particular fields that 
bear their names. 

Let us here quote one inscription, taken 
11 



122 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



from the Cemetery of Balbina, as it will 
illustrate several points of interest. "W"e give 
it first in Latin, though in plainer letters than 
the original, and then in English. 

SABINI BISOMUM : SE VIVO FECIT SIBI IN CEME- 
TERIO BALBIN^, IN CRYPTA NOVA. 

^* The bisomum of Sabinus. He made it for himself 
during his lifetime, in the Cemetery of Balbina, in the 
new crypt" 

The v^ord hisomum means a place for two 
bodies. Usually one person only was buried 
in a cell or niche made in the sides of the 
chamber or passage-way. Occasionally the 
grave was made in the bottom of the passage. 

A larger excavation was made when two 
were buried together ; and a larger still for 
three, in which case it was called a Trisomum. 

The principal passage-ways or subterra- 
nean chambers along whose sides these graves 
are found, were usually eight or ten feet high 
and six or seven feet wide. Occasionally 
they underlie each other, like the stories of 
a building, and in some instances were three 
stories deep and connected by stair-ways. 
The niches in their sides, which were used 
as graves, were sometimes scattered along 



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CEMETERY FOR CHRISTIANS. 123 



quite irregularly, and sometimes were care- 
fully arranged in tiers or courses one above 
the other, as in the accompanying picture. 

''In the subjoined engraving, copied ori- 
ginally by Boldetti, we have a view of two 
graves, the first of which is closed by three 
pieces of terra-cotta, or burnt earth, while 
the latter is partially opened, so that the 
skeleton lying within can be seen. The 
palm-branch and cup have been rudely 
scratched upon the stone. It was thus, on 
these slabs, were cut the Christian emblems 
which the early followers of our Lord so 
much delighted to use, and there too they 
scrawled the brief epitaphs by which, in 
that age of fear and persecution, they marked 
the resting-place of the brethren. While 
every thing around speaks of suffering, it tells 
also of the simple, earnest faith of men, with 
whom the glories of the next world had 
swallowed up all the pains of their brief 
mortal prilgrimage." 

After the body was deposited in its place, 
tiie entrance to the grave was closed up, and 
a brief inscription sculptured or painted on 
the tablet : so that we could walk along this 
passage with torch in hand, and have a brief 



124 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



history of the sleepers there, as we pass 
through a cemetery above ground at the 
present day, reading on each side a few 
facts in regard to the buried dead. 

Crypt means something concealed; in 
this connection it denotes a concealed pas- 
sage or chamber. This name was therefore 
applied to the new passages that were opened 
for the sole purpose of burial, and were called 
new, in distinction from the original excava- 
tions made probably in procuring building 
materials. The new crypts were generally 
more convenient and elegant than the others. 
In one case, an inscription speaks of "the 
new crypt behind the saints.'' 

We know from various sources that the 
early Christians considered it a great privilege 
to be buried near any distinguished followers 
of Christ, and especially, near any one who 
had died a martyr. We conclude therefore 
that this new crypt was opened from a main 
passage, along whose sides distinguished 
Christians had been deposited, and opened in 
such a way as to lead around into the rear of 
the graves of eminent disciples which were 
upon the sides of the main passage. Thus 



CEMETERY FOR CHRISTIANS. 125 



were they buried " in the new crypt beMnd 
the saints.'* 

Jerome, who was a native of Dalmatia 
upon the eastern side of the gulf of Venice, 
but went to Eome to complete his education 
al>out the middle of the fourth century, was 
interested in visiting the catacombs, and fi:om 
what he saw there and heard of the Chris- 
tians, he w^as led after a short time to em- 
brace their faith. 

He has left us this vivid description of 
the catacombs at that period : — 

"When I was at Rome, still a youth, and 
employed in literary pursuits, I was accus- 
tomed, in company with others of my own 
age, and actuated by the same feelings, to 
visit on Sundays the sepulchres of the apostles 
and martyrs ; and often to go down into the 
crypts dug in the heart of the earth, where 
the walls on either side are lined with the 
dead; and so intense is the darkness that 
we almost realize the words of the prophet, 
"they go down alive into hell,'* (or hades ;) 
and here and there a scanty aperture, ill 
deserving the name of window, admits 
scarcely light enough to mitigate the gloom 
which reigns below and as we advance 
11* 



126 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



through the shades with cautious steps,' we 
are forcibly reminded of the words of Virgil 
— ''Horror on all sides; even the silence 
terrifies the mind." 

If now the reader will open this book at 
the frontispiece, he may see an illustration 
of what we have been saying. Here the 
spectator is supposed to stand in one of the 
original or main passages of the catacombs, 
looking toward its entrance, where the light 
is streaming in from the outside. On the 
left and nearest side are three niches in the 
rock, made for graves, and either not yet 
occupied or their doors removed. The lower 
of these thi^ee is much larger than the others. 
This is a bisomum. 

Farther along and upon the opposite side 
there is a partially closed opening which 
branches ofi* from the main passage. This 
may have been a new crypt. 

"While the dead were generally buried 
separately, or two and sometimes three 
together, there is occasionally found a tablet 
which records a large number : thus — 

MAKCELLA AND FIVE HUNDRED AND FIFTY 
MARTYRS OF CHRIST. 



CEMETERY FOR CHRISTIANS. 127 



As we have said before, this may mean 
that a few remains of many martyrs who 
perished at the same time, were gathered 
up and deposited in a common receptacle, 
and then the fact briefly recorded as above. 
Or, it may mean, that this tablet was placed 
there in memory of those who perished at a 
certain time, although none of their bodies 
may have been actually deposited there. The 
former supposition would find a parallel in 
these inscriptions in the Paris catacombs, 
before mentioned : — 

TOMB OF THE REVOLUTION. 

Or, 

TOMB OF THE VICTIMS. 

And the latter supposition would find its 
parallel in the monuments which are raised 
at this day, and inscribed thus : — 

IN MEMORY OF 

FIVE HUNDRED CITIZENS WHO FELL HERE WHILE 

FIGHTING FOR THEIR COUNTRY. 

Or thus : — 

ON THIS SPOT, 

FIFTEEN WOMEN AND CHILDREN WERE MASSACRED 

BY THE MERCILESS SAVAGES. 

In the epitaph to which we have referred, 



128 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



there occurs another significant word, viz. 
cemetery. This, we have already said, means 
a sleeping-place. The early Christians were 
the first to apply it to a place where their 
dead were buried; for they were the first 
who fully believed in a resurrection. As 
therefore they saw their friends lie down to 
sleep at night, in sweet assurance that they 
would arise again with the dawn, refreshed 
in both mind and body, so did they commit 
the bodies of their deceased friends to the 
tomb in as full and as sweet an assurance 
that ere long they would awake again and 
rise in new power and beauty, and also im- 
mortal. 

"What the rising sun was daily to a slum- 
bering hemisphere, all that and even more 
would the coming of the glorious Sun of 
Righteousness be to all his followers who 
had died upon the earth. How natural then 
that they should speak of death only as a 
soft, sweet sleep ! And who can wonder that 
they should have covered their tombs as they 
did with these delightful intimations that 
their friends had only laid themselves down 
to rest awhile, and would in due time awake 
and rise to a happier and better life ? 



CEMETERY FOR CHRISTIANS. 129 



How superior this to tlie poor consolations 
which the pagan Romans found in the 
thought of death! The doctrine of their 
life often was — ''Let us eat and drink, for 
to-morrow we die !" Let us enjoy all we can 
while we live, for death will soon put an 
end to all our joys ! 

Some of their very epitaphs are character- 
ized by like expressions of gross sensualism. 
Well may the tablet on which the following 
is engraved stand on the opposite side of the 
Lapidarian Gallery from that which is 
adorned by the sentiments of the Christians. 

HE LIVED FIFTY SEVEN YEARS. 
TO THE DIVINE MANES OF TITUS CLAUDIUS SECUNDUS. 

HERE, HE HAS WITH HIM EVERY THING. 

BATHS, WINE, AND LUST, RUIN OUR CONSTITUTIONS, 

BUT THEY CONSTITUTE LIFE. 

FAREWELL— FAREWELL ! 

The better class of pagan epitaphs breathe 
the language of despair. In the following 
plaintive inscription, we have an affecting 
illustration of what the apostle Paul had in 
inind when he told his fellow-Christians at 
Thessalonica that they should not "sorrow 
as others who have no hope." 



130 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



A disconsolate mother thus bemoans lier 
lost child : — 

CAIXIS JULIUS MAXIMUS, JE. TWO YEARS AND FIVE 

MONTHS. 

EELENTLESS FORTUNE, WHO DELIGHTED IN 

CRUEL DEATH! 

WHY IS MAXIMUS SO EARLY SNATCHED FROM ME— 

HE WHO LATELY USED TO LIE BELOVED, ON MY 

BOSOM! 

THIS STONE NOW MARKS HIS TOMB. BEHOLD HIS 

MOTHER! 

Here is another similar strain of lamen- 
tation over a son : — 

HIS MOTHER FUSCA, 

LEFT TO SORROW AND GROANING, 

BURIED HIM, MOIST WITH TEARS AND BALSAM, 

IN THIS SEPULCHRE. 

The following is less plaintive, but more 
impious : — 

I, PROCOPE, 

LIFT UP MY HANDS AGAINST THE GODS WHO 

SNATCHED AWAY ME, INNOCENT. 

It might be difficult to say whether the 
following were more tiifling than stoical. 
The imagery is evidently borrowed from the 
theatre. 



CEMETERY FOR CHRISTIANS. 131 



WHILE i LIVED, I LIVED WELL. 

MY DRAMA IS NOW ENDED : SOON YOURS WILL BE. 

FAREWELL, AND APPLAUD ME ! 

In almost the same words, the dying 
Augustus asked his friends if they thought 
he had played the drama of life well, and 
called upon them, if they so thought, to ap- 
plaud him as he left the stage. In contrast 
with this fatalism, stoicism and despair, how 
cheering is the idea of the Christian's repose 
in death ! Passing therefore from these pa- 
gan epitaphs to those which are Christian, 
is like emerging fi^om the darkness of the 
catacombs into the sweet, bright light of 
day. A common Roman name for a grave 
was ^nhe eternal home" or dwelling of the 
dead, a name which could be retained no 
longer when the gospel had brought life and 
immortality to light. Upon the dawning of 
the Christian hope on that heathen empire, 
and with faith burning brightly in their 
bosoms, they could no longer look upon the 
grave with despair, or apply to it names of 
gloomy association. Not satisfied with the 
Latin word sepulchrum^ which meant only a 
place for burial, they employed most gene- 
rally for the purpose one of the sweetest 



132 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME, 



and most pleasant words whicli language 
afforded ; and fi^om that time till now, the 
place where Christ's beloved followers are 
buried is called a cemetery^ or "place of 
sleep/' 

Thus a Spanish traveller, who visited the 
catacombs awhile after persecution had 
ceased, communes with himself in regard 
to this matter, while standing in the presence 
of these numerous dead : — " There will soon 
come an age when genial warmth shall re- 
visit these bones, and the soul will resume 
its former tabernacle, animated with living 
blood. * * * 

" For this reason is such care bestowed upon 
the isepulchre — such honour paid to the. 
motionless limbs — such luxury displayed in 
funerals. We spread the linen cloth of spot- 
less white — mjrrrh and fi^ankincense embalm 
the body. What mean these excavated 
rocks ? What these fair monuments ? What 
but that the object intrusted to them is sleep- 
ing and not dead !'' 



QUOTATIONS FROM THE CATACOMBS. leSeS 



CHAPTER IX. 

QUOTATIONS FROM THE CATACOMBS. 

Of the symbols employed by the early 
Christians, as expressive of the object of 
their faith and the ground of their hope 
of eternal life and glory, the figure of the 
cross, as a memorial of the death of Christ, 
would seem the most natural and expres- 
sive, and the least likely to be perverted to 
the injury of those for whom Christ died. 
But this simple emblem of our redemption 
has grown into the crucifix, sometimes even 
nodding and winking to its worshippers by 
the concealed strings of the priests, and 
has been made for ages the instrument of 
superstition and idolatry. We have in the 
history of this corruption the saddest illus- 
tration of the aversion of man's heart to 
spiritual worship, and its desperate pro- 
pensity to set up, in place of the Almighty, 
any idol of its own contrivance that can be 

12 



184 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



seen or handled. Let us then watch vis:!- 
lantly against all attempts to introduce any 
material symbol into Christian worship, 
other than those expressly appointed by the 
Great Master of assemblies — taking warning 
from the present loathsome state of the 
church founded by the early martyrs, which 
has suftered the cross to obscure the Christ, 
and, where the first Christians rejoiced at the 
overthrow of idols, the beautiful sculptures 
of ancient art, has enshrined fragments of 
wood for worship. The pretended miracle 
wrought in the reign of Constantine for ''the 
invention of the Holy Cross," shows how 
rapidly the church fell from its primitive 
sincerity; and as this (with the change of 
veneration for the martyrs into a superstitious 
reverence for their bones) took place before 
the catacombs were finally disused for inter- 
ment, some of the later inscriptions beai* 
the tokens of a declension afterward more 
deep and almost universal. There is no 
doubt that additions of this kind have been 
in some cases made upon the old tablets, 
since the re-opening of the catacombs. 

A veiy common method of representing 
the Christian faith of the departed was by 



QUOTATIONS FROM THE CATACOMBS. 135 



the use on the grave-stone of the first two 
letters of the name Christ. K on the Greek 
capital letter X, the letter R, which is our P, 
is placed, we have the first letters of Christ's 
name in Greek, corresponding to CHR. 
This is commonly called the monogram. It 
is found upon very many of the Christian 
tombs. The pagans may not have under- 
stood its meaning, but it carried a world of 
meaning to the Christian's heart. When 
placed upon a tombstone, it means — In 
Christ, Thus, in the following inscription : 




which probably signified, 

Victrix, (a woman's name,) victorious in Christ. 

Sometimes one limb of the X was ex- 
tended, so as to resemble the cross, and still 
it would read as before, CIIR, i, e, in Christ. 
As, upon this tablet and under a Latin word 
signifying innocence. 



136 



THE CATACOMBS OF KOME. 




INNOCENDA 



Occasionally, too, the Greek letters, Alpha 
and Omega, (the first and last in the Greek 
alphabet,) were added, making this symbol 
of the Saviour still more expressive ; accord- 
ing to what the Redeemer says in the Apoca- 
lypse — "I am Alpha and Omega,'' &c. 

Often the epitaph commenced or ended 
with these w^ords — "In peace," — or these, 
"Peace! Peace! Peace!" This idea of the 
sleeper's peace was often symbolized by the 
olive leaf or branch, and often by a dove. 

Sometimes several of these symbols are 
found upon the same tablet, thus : 



QUOTATIONS FROM THE CATACOMBS. 137 




A palm leaf or brancli 
is used in Scripture as a 
symbol of victory, Rev. vii. 9, and so is a 
wreath of laurel, "the corruptible crown" 




spoken of by Paul, 1 Cor. ix. 25. These 
are frequently found separate, and some- 
times we find them both encircling the mo- 
nogram. Thus on the tombstone of a little 
girl 



^2* 



138 



THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 




FLAVIA JOVINA, WHO LIVED THEEE YEARS AKD 
THIRTY DAYS— A NEOPHYTE— IN PEACE. 
(SHE DIED) THE ELEVENTH BEFORE THE KAXENDS. . . . 

The reader will remember the literal mean- 
ing of the word cemetery. This idea of the 
Christian's death as a sweet, transient sleep, 
is often expressed in epitaphs. 

THE SLEEPING-PLACE OF ELPIS. 

ZOTICUS, LAID HERE TO SLEEP. 

GEMELLA SLEEPS IN PEACE. 

ASELTJS SLEEPS IN CHRIST. 

How comforting such inscriptions must have 
been to sorrowinij: friends ! 



BiCrORI 
FACE 




UAIN 



VICTORIOUS IN PEACE AND IN CHRIST. 

The emblem L^ an ancient bushel measure filled with com. 



QUOTATIONS PROM THE CATACOMBS. 139 



MAETYRIA— IN PEACE. 

VIDALIO, IN THE PEACE OF CHRIST. 

NICEPHORUS, A SWEET SOUL, IN THE PLACE OP 

REFRESHMENT. 

Sometimes the surviving friend pronounced 
a kind of benediction upon the happy dead : 

IN CHRIST : BOLOSA, MAY GOD REFRESH THEE. 

AMERIMNUS TO RUFINA, HIS DEAREST WIFE, 

THE WELL-DESERVING. 

MAY GOD REFRESH THY SPIRIT. 

This is very difierent from praying for the 
souls of the dead, which are suflering the tor- 
ments of purgatory. None of the agonising 
entreaties for the prayers of the living, which 
filled the tombstones of the middle ages, ap- 
pear in these ancient inscriptions. The mere 
forms of a benediction, like those we have 
quoted, are very rare. Their use in any case 
is undoubtedly to be attributed to their fre- 
quency upon pagan tombs ; for all who have 
studied at all our common phraseologies, 
know how many expressions become ha- 
bitual, whose literal interpretation would sui- 
priae those who utter them. If interpreted 
as [)riiyers, these inscriptions would be as un- 



140 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



scriptural as the following, takeu JErom the 
tombs of cotemporary Pagan Romans. 

HEBE ARE THE REMAINS OF PELOPS. 

MAY THE EARTH BE LIGHT UPON THEE. 

FAREWELL THAIS: 

MAT THE GODS BE GOOD TO THEE. 

FAREWELL SEPTIMIA: 

MAY THE EARTH BE LIGHT UPON THEE. 

WHOEVER PLACES A BURNING LAMP BEFORE THIS 

TOMB, MAY A GOLDEN SOIL COVER HIS ASHES. 

We remark, in passing, that this pagan 
custom of placing a lamp upon the tomb or 
near the dead, was universally reprobated 
by the Christians of the first three centuries ; 
and it was only after the church had begun 
to depart, from its primitive purity and sim- 
plicity, that it was adopted by any. It is a 
pagan, and not a Christian custom. 

The inscriptions are generally very brief. 
But sometimes there is an allusion to some 
single trait in the character of the deceased ; 
as in the following instances. 

MAXIMINUS, WHO LIVED TWENTY-THREE YEARS: 

FRIEND OF ALL MEN. 

IN CHRIST. 

ON THE FIFTH KALENDS OF NOVEMBER SLEPT 

GORGONIUS, 

FRIEND OF ALL, AND ENEMY OF NONE. 



QUOTATIONS FROM THE CATACOMBS. 141 



Sometimes the inscriptions give us plea- 
sing information as to the relations of the 
departed. 

CECILIUS THE HUSBAND, TO CECILIA PLACIDINA, 

MY WIFE, OF EXCELLENT MEMORY, 

WITH WHOM I LIVED WELL TEN YEARS, WITHOUT 

ANY QUARREL. 

IN JESUS CHRIST, SON OF GOD, THE SAVIOUR. 

SACRED TO CHRIST, THE SUPREME GOD. 

VITALIS, BURIED ON SATURDAY, KALENDS OF 

AUGUST, 

AGED TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AND EIGHT MONTHS. 

SHE LIVED WITH HER HUSBAND TEN YEARS AND 

THIRTY DAYS. 

IN CHRIST, THE FIRST AND THE LAST. 

TO DOMNINA, 

MY SWEETEST AND MOST INNOCENT WIFE, WHO 

LIVED SIXTEEN YEARS AND FOUR MONTHS, AND 

WAS MARRIED TWO YEARS, FOUR MONTHS, AND 

NINE DAYS : WITH WHOM I WAS NOT ABLE TO LIVE, 

ON ACCOUNT OF MY TRAVELLING, MORE THAN SIX 

MONTHS: DURING WHICH TIME I SHEWED HER MY 

LOVE, AS I FELT IT. NONE ELSE SO LOVED EACH 

OTHER. BURIED ON THE FIFTEENTH BEFORE THE 

KALENDS OF JUNE. 



142 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



TO CLAUDIUS 

THE WELL-DESERVING AND AFFECTIONATE, WHO 

LOVED ME. 

HE LIVED ABOUT TWENTY-FIVE YEARS. 

IN CHRIST. 

A Clii^istian female was sometimes called 
a "handmaid of God," a phrase used by 
Tertullian in opposition to "handmaid of 
the devil." Thus in the following: 

AURELIA AGAPETILLA, THE HANDMAID OF GOD 

WHO SLEEPS IN PEACE. 

SHE LIVED TWENTY-ONE YEARS, THREE MONTHS, 

AND FOUR DAYS. 

HER FATHER ERECTED THIS. 

IN CHRIST. 

AESTONIA, A TRAVELLING VIRGIN, 
WHO LIVED FORTY-ONE YEARS AND EIGHT DAYS. 
SHE DEPARTED FROM THE BODY ON THE FOURTH 

BEFORE THE ElALENDS OF MARCH. 

The word virgo peregrina translated " tra- 
velling virgin," means only that she was 
unmarried and absent from her usual home, 
either at the time of her conversion to 
Christianity, or at the time of her death. 
The following is inimitable for its tender- 
ness and beauty. 



QUOTATIONS FROM THE CATACOMBS. 143 



LATTEENCE, TO HIS SWEETEST SON SEVERUS, 

BORNE AWAY BY ANGELS ON THE SEVENTH IDES 

OF JANUARY. 

And these too, are hardly less so : 

CONSTANTIA, 

OF WONDERFUL BEAUTY AND AMIABILITY, 

WHO LIVED EIGHTEEN YEARS, SIX MONTHS, AND 

SIXTEEN DAYS. 

CONSTANTIfli, IN PEACE. 



SIMPLICIUS, OF GOOD AND HAPPY MEMORY, 

WHO LIVED TWENTY-THREE YEARS AND FORTY 

THREE DAYS. 

IN PEACE. 

HIS BROTHER MADE THIS MONUMENT. 



TO ADSERTOR, OUR SON; 

DEAR, SWEET, MOST INNOCENT AND INCOMPARABLE, 

WHO LIVED SEVENTEEN YEARS, SIX MONTHS, AND 

EIGHT DAYS. 

HIS FATHER AND MOTHER SET UP THIS. 



TO JANUARIUS, SWEET AND GOOD SON, HONOURED 

AND BELOVED BY ALL: 
WHO LIVED TWENTY-THREE YEARS, FIVE MONTHS, 

AND TWENTY-TWO DAYS. 



HIS PARENTS. 

LAURINIA, SWEETER THAN HONEY, 

SLEEPS IN PEACE. 



144 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



TO THE HOLY SOUL INNOCENS, 
WHO LIVED ABOUT THREE YEARS. 



DOMITLANUS, A SIMPLE SOUL, (I. E. INNOCENT AND 
SINCERE,) SLEEPS IN PEACE. 



IN CHRIST: 

DIED ON THE KALENDS OF SEPTEMBER, 

POMPEIANUS THE INNOCENT, 

WHO LIVED SIX YEARS, NINE MONTHS, EIGHT 

DAYS AND POUR HOURS. 

HE SLEEPS IN PEACE. 

This particularity as to Ms age shows how 
precious to the parent's heart is every little 
circumstance connected with a lost child. 

TO THEIR DESERVING SON CALPURNIUS, 

HIS PARENTS MADE THIS: 

HE LIVED FIVE YEARS, EIGHT MONTHS, AND TEN 

DAYS, AND DEPARTED IN PEACE ON THE THIR- 

TEENTH OF JUNE. 



RESPECTUS, 

WHO LIVED FIVE YEARS AND EIGHT MONTHS, 

SLEEPS IN PEACE. 

This last inscription is surrounded with a 
crown of laurels, and underneath it are a dove 
and olive leaves ; as at this day, the graves 
of little children are frequently decorated 
with the representation of a dove, or a lamb, 
or a rose-bud. In some graves of children 



QUOTATIONS FROM THE CATACOMBS. 145 



there have been found a few sucli playthings 
as interest childhood. 

The following has a palm-branch engraved 
upon one side. 

MACTIS, AN INNOCEUT BOY. 
YOU HAVE ALREADY BEGUN TO BE AMONG THE 
INNOCENT ONES. HOW ENDUEING IS SUCH A LIFE 
TO YOU! HOW GLADLY WILL TOUK MOTHER, THE 
CHURCH OF GOD, RECEIVE YOU, RETURNING TO THIS 
WORLD. LET US RESTRAIN OUR GROANS, AND CEASE 
FROM WEEPING. 

A catechumen was one who was under 
instruction, with reference to his admission 
into the church. Thus, the following : 

UCILIANUS, TO BACIUS VALERIUS, A CATECHUMEN, 

WHO LIVED NINE YEARS, EIGHT MONTHS, AND 

TWENTY-TWO DAYS. 

The title neophyte, was given to one who 
had become a convert from paganism to 
Christianity. In the first inscription follow- 
ing, it would seem as if it must mean only a 
child of such a convert, as one only twenty- 
one months old cannot be supposed to have 
foisaken heathenism and chosen Christianity, 
for himself 

13 



146 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



THE TILE OF CANDIDUS, THE NEOPHYTE, 

WHO LIVED TWENTY-ONE MONTHS: 
BURIED ON THE NONES OF SEPTEMBER. 



TO THE NEOPHYTE ROMANXIS, 

THE WELL-DESERVING, 

WHO LIVED EIGHT YEARS AND FIFTEEN DAYS; 

HE RESTS IN PEACE. 

F. GRATIAN AUGUSTUS, FOR THE SECOND TIME, AND 

P. PROBUS, BEING CONSULS. 

The mentioning of the consuls at that 
time, enables us to fix the date of his burial, 
viz., at A. D. 371. It was, with the Ro- 
mans, the common method of fixing dates. 

But the names of the consuls are aflixed 
to pagan inscriptions more frequently than 
to those of the Christians. Their common 
form was like the following : 

TO THE DIVINE MANES. 

JfUBLIUS LIBERIUS LIVED TWO YEARS, THREE 

MONTHS, AND EIGHT DAYS. 

ANICIUS FAUSTUS AND VIRIUS GALLUS BEING CON 

SULS. 

That is, A. D. 98. 

Here is a fragment of an inscription con^ 
taining only the date, and age of the de- 
ceased. 



QUOTATIONS FROM THE CATACOMBS. 147 



* -^■- * THIRTY YEAKS— 
IN THE CONSULATE OF SYRRA AND SENECIO : 
That is, A. D. 102. 

SERVILIA, AGED THIRTEEN. 
IN THE CONSULATE OF PISO AND BOLANUS. 

This was A. D. 111. 

These pagan inscriptions, dating back 
even to the first century and to a period 
when as yet there had been but a few brief 
persecutions of the Christians, show that 
the pagan Romans used the catacombs, oc- 
casionally at least, for burial before the 
Christians were compelled to make th'^m 
their common cemetery. As it was the 
general custom of the wealthy to burn their 
dead, and the few of the higher classes who 
buried them deposited them in costly 
sepulchres, the inscriptions which we have 
(iopied must have been of the poor or ple- 
beian orders for whom in these deserted un- 
derground quarries their friends could easily 
find places of deposit without expense. Some 
branches of these subterranean galleries were 
undoubtedly also used for the dead of the 
pagan Romans even after the Christians began 
to occupy others. We know also that multi- 



148 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



tudes of bodies of slaves and outcasts were 
thrown in heaps by their masters or the rulers, 
wherever they found any excavation or large 
pit easily accessible. The use of the cata- 
combs by the Christians for burial would 
not protect them from defilement of this 
kind by the insulting heathen. 

In consequence of the occasional burial 
of some of the more respectable of the 
heathen poor, a tablet is sometimes found, 
having a heathen inscription upon one side 
and a Christian inscription upon the other. 
The stone had been first placed at the 
heathen's grave, with an appropriate epitaph ; 
and many years afterward, (perhaps after the 
lapse of one, two, or three centuries,) some 
poor Christian family had turned that side 
to the wall, and written upon the other a 
Christian epitaph. Thus the. same stone 
may bear upon one face the name of the 
wicked whose memory shall rot, and upon 
the other a record of the righteous whose name 
shall be had in everlasting remembrance. 

One of the most important peculiari- 
ties of the Romish church is the system 
of celibacy which it has engrafted into its 
whole system; not only ''forbidding to 



QUOTATIONS FROM THE CATACOMBS. 149 



many'' among their priesthoodj but incul- 
cating through all their communion senti- 
ments averse to that, which the word of God 
pronounces honourable and which the great 
author of our being instituted in man's pri- 
meval state. God himself ordained marriage 
in man's state of innocence, and throughout 
all ages of the church has given his sanction 
to the endearing tie, by positive injunction, 
establishing a principle equally adverse to the 
polygamy of the heathen and the monas- 
ticism of the Eomish church. The history 
of the primitive church, as presented in the 
records of the catacombs, now staring in the 
face of that very church in the most notable 
and sacred of all their public institutions, 
the Vatican itself, is most explicit and decisive 
on this subject. The tender expressions of 
affection, which record, in terms as brief as 
they are touching, the love of husbands and 
wives, and of children, are evidences of that 
spirit of love which the Gospel impressed 
upon the hearts of those who were won to 
the belief Df its truths. N"ot only was this 
a common sentiment among the people, but 
it prevailed among the ministers of the Chris- 
tian church down to the fourth century. 
13^ 



150 THE CATACOMBS OF KOME. 



Among the epitaphs which show that the 
marriage relation existed in the ministry, 
contrary to the present requirements of the 
Romish chnrch, is the follow^ing copied from 
a parchment manuscript: — 

HUKC MIHI COMPOSUIT TUMULTJM LAURENTIA 

CONJUX, 

MORIBUS APIA MEIS, SEMPER VENERANDA, FIDELIS. 

INVIDIA INFELIX TANDEM COMPRESSA QTJIESCIT 

OCTAGINTA LEO TRANSCENDIT EPISCOPUS ANNOS. 

My wife Laurentia made me this tomb ; she was ever 
suited to my disposition, venerable and faithful. At 
length disappointed envy lies crushed: the bishop Leo 
survived his 80th year. 

The bishop was buried by his wife ; but 
the epitaph was evidently composed, either 
by the bishop before her death, or by a third 
person. 

Of presbyters very few epitaphs remain : 
Aringhi gives the following : — 

LOCVS BASILI PRESS ET FELICITATIS EIVS 
SIBI FECERVNT. 

The place of Basil the presbyter, and his Felicitas. 
They made it for themselves. 

Aringhi was accused by Reinesius of 
having suppressed the w^ord wife in this 



QUOTATIONS FROM THE CATACOMBS. 151 



epitaph. Fabretti, in defence of the Roman 
antiquarian, observes, that there would be 
no advantage in suppressing the word, as 
Basil could style none other than his wife 
"hisFelicitas." 

The epitaph of a priest's daughter is also 
given by Aringhi (lib. iv. c. 29). 

OLIM PRESBYTERI GABINI FILIA FELIX 

HIC SVSANNA JACET IN PACE PATEI 

SOCIATA. 

Once the happy daughter of the presbyter Gabinus, 
here lies Susanna, joined with her father in peace. 

Aringhi has preserved a remarkable in- 
scription to the wife of a deacon : — 

LEVITAE CONITINX PETEONIA FORMA PVDORIS 

HIS MEA DEPONENS SEDIBVS OSSA LOCO 

PARCITE VOS LACRIMIS DVLCES CVM CONIVGE 

NATAE 

VIVENTEMQVE DEO CSEDITE FLERE NEFAS 

DP IN PACE III NON OCTOBRIS FESTO VC CONSS. 

Petronia, a deacon's wife, the type of modesty. — In this 
place I lay my bones ; spare your tears, dear husband 
and daughters, and believe that it is forbidden to weep 
for one who lives in God. Buried in peace, on the 3rd 
before the Nones of October, in the consulate of Festus 
(i. e. in 472.) 



152 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



The epitaph of a lector, or reader, is given 
by Fabretti : — 

CLAVDIVS ATTICIA 

NVS LECTOE 

ET CLAVDIA 

FELICISSIMA 

COIVX. 

Claudius Atticianus a lector, and Claudia Felicissima, 
his wife. 

The lectors were ordained very young, and 
promoted to other oflSices in course of time. 
They were a class somewhat resembling our 
choristers, and were employed to read the 
Scriptures aloud in the church. At that 
time, remarks Jerome, "none of the noble 
women in Rome knew anything about mon- 
asticism ; nor did they venture, on account 
of the novelty of the thing, to assume a 
name then reckoned base and ignomi- 
nious.''* From the year 360 we may date 
the introduction of monasticism into Rome. 

Whatever purity of intention belonged to 
the earliest votaries of .monasticism, it is to 
oe feared that the end proposed by the monks 

* Epistle 96. Epitaphium Marcellae. 



QUOTATIONS FROM THE CATACOMBS. 153 



and nuns of later times, was to purchase, 
by its means, the highest rewards that 
Heaven could bestow. To be saved by the 
blood of Christ was humbling, when salva- 
tion could be bought by a species of self- 
sacrifice. A new passport to eternal glory, 
and one which conferred upon its possessor 
great earthly honour, was the premium upon 
a life of celibacy. 

We may not find a better opportunity 
than this to refer to one remarkable omis- 
sion in the funeral tablets of the catacombs. 
It is stated, that in all the vast collection in 
the Lapidarian gallery, (although some of 
the tablets are probably of a date much later 
than the fourth century) the name of the 
Virgin Mary does not once occur. Nor is it 
to be found in any truly ancient inscription 
published in the works elsewhere mentioned. 
This is only in accordance with the well 
known fact that she is scarcely mentioned 
in the writings of the fathers of those cen- 
turies. The astonishing contrast between 
the ancient Christian church and the modern 
Greek and Roman churches, in this respect, 
cannot be too forcibly impressed on us. 

The Virgin Mary is in fact the enthroned 



154 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



goddess of southern Europe. Her votaries 
would indignantly deny this ; but nothing is 
more certain: for whatever name we may 
use for the one to whom we give the j&rst 
place in our religious affections, that being 
is our God. Every name of dignity ascribed 
to the goddesses of the old paganism, every 
accumulation of epithets denoting power and 
glory in heaven and on earth, is found in 
the litanies of the modern papal church, as 
well as in the private devotions of the people. 
And the efficacy of her interposition is espe- 
cially sought at the hour of death, and for 
the souls of the departed. 

This Mary- worship, though very gradually 
introduced, became firmly established during 
the dark ages. To give place to his human 
mother, the Son of God was deposed from 
his throne as mediator. '' May God Almighty 
forgive your sins for the merits of our Lady !" 
was the form of absolution used by Pope 
Gregory VII. A writer of authority in the 
Roman church, Martin Del Rio, a Jesuit 
priest. Doctor of Theology, and ''Professor 
of the Sacred Scriptures" in her colleges, in 
hig work published in 1599, with the sanction 
of church dignitaries, and afterward several 



QUOTATIONS FROM THE CATACOMBS. 155 



times reprinted, tells the following story, 
which, is but one of a hundred of the same 
characterjin the Catholic books of early times : 
"After the battle of Mcopolis between the 
Emperor Sigismund and the Turks, a hodyless 
head among the slain began to talk, and 
called for a priest. 'I am a Christian,' it 
cried ; ' I fell in this battle without absolution 
and confession. Mary mother does not per- 
mit me to sink into eternal punishment ; she 
preserves to me the use of the tongue that 
I may confess my sins and purify my soul 
by the apostolic sacred rites for the dying. 
Call therefore I pray, a priest, who may hear 
my confession and absolve me." The reason 
assigned by him for this peculiar grace from 
Mary, was, that he had always rendered her 
a peculiar devotion and had kept every year 
her seven festivals with rigid exactness. After 
confession, absolution and extreme unction, 
the head became instantly silent. Del Rio 
refers for this narrative to Hungarian histo- 
rians and adds: "Let the innovating re- 
formers read it, and repent in view of a 
miracle so illustrious ; confirming so posi- 
tively the duty of devotion to the mother of 



156 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



God, of fasts and festivals and the sacrament 
of confession. 

The epitaphs of the Middle Ages often in- 
dicate the prevalent substitution of Mary for 
Christ. There was less of it in England than 
in Southern Europe. Yet such inscriptions 
as the following were common even there: 
it was in a church yard at Kaynham : — 

FOR THE LOVE OF JESTJ, PRAY FOR ME; 

I MAY NOT PRAY NOW; PRAY YE 

THAT MY PEYNES LESSED MAY BE, 

WYTH ONE PATER-NOSTER> AND ONE AVE. 

That is, by repeating the Latin of the Lord's 
prayer, and of the salutation to the Virgin 
Mary : — the object of the last being to obtain 
her mighty interposition to deliver the soul 
from the flames of pui'gatory. 

We have dwelt on this subject more at 
length because this woman-worship is appar- 
ently now reviving throughout all the Catholic 
world, and vA\h very little modification of 
its old form of blasphemy. From their yet 
speaking epitaphs, the early Christians of 
Rome attest their own freedom from this 
corruption, and call on us like them to love 
and serve Him only, who is our only Saviour. 



PICTURES FROM THE CATACOMBS. 157 



CHAPTER X. 

PICTURES EROM THE CATACOMBS. 

"We have already seen what use was made 
of the pictures or sculptures of certain things 
as emblems of spiritual truths; as for 
instance, a dove, to represent meekness and 
innocence ; a dove bearing an olive leaf, as 
an emblem of peace ; and a laurel wreath 
or a palm-branch as a sign of victory. 

"We may add to these, the lamb, as a symbol 
of gentleness and innocence, and a cock, as 
a signal for watchfulness. In a picture 
which was made probably as late as the 
fourth century, we find two persons facing 
each other, and between them stands an 
Ionic column of about their own height, 
surmounted by a crowing cock. We at 
once perceive that this was an attempt to re- 
p]:esent in picture the scene of Peter's denial. 

The figure of a ship was frequently used 

upon the tomb to indicate that the soul of 
I'* 



158 



THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



the deceased had launched off upou a voyage 
toward the haven of eternal rest. We shall 
refer to this beautiful symbol again. 

The anchor was also used as at this day, 
as the emblem of steadfast hope. 

As the doctrine of the resurrection was 
new to them and at the same time a doctrine 
of unspeakable consolation to mourners, we 
find it very frequently symbolized upon their 
tombs. This is sometimes done and very 
appropriately done by a picture of Lazarus 
coming forth from his grave at the call of 
his Saviour. But these primitive Christians 
for some reason, seemed to have a great 
partiality for the representation of Jonah, 
restored to a life on shore, as a symbol of 
the Resurrection. Here is an engraving of 
one such copied from a sarcophagus, or coffin, 
said to have been found in the catacombs. 




PICTURES FROM THE CATACOMBS. 159 



It would be difficult to imagine a specimen 
of art more rude than this, and yet it sug- 
gested to tlieir minds the grand fact of God's 
ability to restore the lost to life again. 

The ship is here a mere boat or skiff; the 
iish, a rude monster vriih the head and paws 
of a quadruped ; the sea only a narrow stream 
with a bold shore ; and on one side of the 
boat the monster is swallowing the dis- 
obedient prophet, while upon the other side, 
it is, at the same moment, casting him forth 
headlong against the rocks upon the shore ! 
In another picture of this scene, the prophet 
issues from the monster's mouth face upward, 
and immediately over his head there hang 
suspended from the naked rock three ripe 
gourds. 




In the picture above engraved, the ailit^t, 
as if to economize room, and represent as 
many good things as possible in his picture, 



160 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



dismisses all regard to chronological order, 
and places in the back ground Noah in hia 
ark, holding out his hand to receive the dove. 
The dove seems to be standing upon the 
elevated prow of the boat, while Noah is 
standing or sitting in a mere box. In other 
pictures of this subject, the ark or box has 
a lid and lock. The lid is thrown back, and 
the patriarch, stands with outstretched arms 
for the arrival of the dove with the olive-leaf, 
indicating to him that he might now leave 
his narrow home. The application even of 





these rude pictures to the hope of the sleep- 
ing Christian is very obvious. Other scrip- 
tural histories of the deliverance of God's 
people from scenes of peril were also used 
to suggest the same consoling doctrine of 
the resurrection. Hence we find representa- 
tions of Daniel standing calm and unhurt 




Daniel in the Den of Lions. 



p. 16L 



PICTURES FROM THE CATACOMBS. 



161 



between two fierce lions; and his three 
friends stand as calmly amid the fires of 
Nebuchadnezzar's ftirnace. One of their 




pictures of this class we copy as a curiosity. 
The mighty furnace of the plains of Dura 
is reduced to a mere oven in three compart- 
ments, over the flames of which the three 
stand ; the fire being fed through three small 
doors beneath. But their calm countenances 
and the position of their hands, as if spread 
in prayer or praise, indicate very clearly the 
grand truth of the symbol, viz., that God is 
able to protect his people from the wrath of 
all their enemies, and to make them peaceful 
and happy amid the most fiery trials. 

Here is also a picture of Abraham ofiering 
up his son Isaac. The hand over the patri- 
arch's left shoulder is the very significant 

14^ 



162 



THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 




and appropriate symbol by which the inter- 
position of the Deity was represented. They 
dared not attempt to picture himself, as lias 
been profanely done so often in the Papal 
Church, but only a symbol of his presence to 
arrest the sacrifice. The animal at Abraham's 
feet is undoubtedly the ram which God pro- 
vided for the burnt offering. This picture 
rude as it is, is a much better specimen of 
the art of sculpture than most of those before 



PICTURES FROM THE CATACOMBS. 163 



copied, and hence we refer it to a somewhat 
later period. 

We have spoken of the monogram which, 
by a combination of two letters, represented 
Christ, and thus Christianity. There was 
also another enigmatical expression of essen- 
tially the same truth. One of the most 
common pictures accompanying inscriptions 
is that of a fish. 

In the Greek language, (the original lan- 
guage of the JN ew Testament) the word fish is 
ixdo<;^ which in English would be thus ex- 
pressed in five letters, viz., I-CH-TH-U-S. 

These five letters are the initials of five 
words dear to the Christians, viz. : 

I X T S 

Jesus — Christ — of God — ^the Son — Saviour. 

So that by this simple and common word 
Ichthus, or by the still simpler picture 
of a fish, they could suggest to themselves 
and to each other the sublime and precious 
truths expressed in these words. It was a 
comprehensive confession of faith, and hence 
was very frequently painted or sculptured 
upon the tombs of his followers. 



164 



THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 




Here is an exceedingly simple and rude 
picture of the fish ; and here is one equally- 
rude, but accompanied by the monogram. 




This language of signs and symbols may 
have answered a double purpose to the prim- 
itive Christians. For if they were in danger 
on account of their faith, still, by the use of 
some of these significant words, or figures, 
they could make themselves known to one 



PICTURES FROM THE CATACOMBS. 165 



anotlier, or reveal the place where a believer 
slept without exciting the suspicion of their 
enemies. Many of them who could not read, 
(for reading was the privilege of the few in 
those centuries, whether of pagans or Chris- 
tians,) could easily recognize the tomb of a 
friend, by means of some painting or sculp- 
ture upon it, while they could not distinguish 
it by the inscription. 

It will excite the surprise of some readers 
that these sculptures and paintings should 
be so exceedingly rude, in an age and in a 
city in which all the fine arts were at the 
very zenith of perfection. We might answer 
by pointing to the antique grave stones in 
many of pur country church-yards, where 
we may find specimens of versifying and of 
sculpture which will match the rudest speci- • 
men that can be dug out of the darkest crypt 
of the catacombs; — and these too made at 
the very time when the arts were elsewhere 
* cultivated with great success. 

But a proper and satisfactory explanation is 
found in the condition and state of feeling of 
the Christians of those centuries. They were 
as a class too poor to have commanded for 
their resting places, an expensive style of art, 



166 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



even if they had desired to do it. A poor 
Fossor could afford no inducement for a 
Phidias to come down fi^om the pleasant 
light of day and spend much time in adorn- 
ing the tomb of a despised Christian. Neither 
would the many who belonged to the hum- 
bler classes, possess a taste sufficiently culti- 
vated to place any very great value upon the 
higher works of art. But the principle ex- 
planation is, that the arts were at that time 
altogether pagan. The artists were heathen 
and doubtless sympathised with their fellow- 
heathen in their feelings toward Christianity 
and their greatest works were executed 
under the patronage of pagan priests or 
worshippers, for heathen Gods ai^d heathen 
temples. They were also as polluted by the 
multitude of sculptures and paintings grossly 
obscene, as they were idolatrous. The fine 
arts had not, as yet, been applied to a single 
Christian use. There was, in short, nothing 
Christian about them, and the Christians 
could not have one pleasant religious associa- 
tion with them. On the contrary their whole 
religious nature abhorred them. To their 
minds they were idolatrous, and corrupting; 
Their hearts revolted from them no less than 



PICTURES FROM THE CATACOMBS. 167 



their consciences. They would as soon 
think of employing a devotee of Juno or of 
Bacchus to bury their friends who had died 
for Christ, as to employ a pagan artist to 
adorn their tomb. Rather would they em- 
ploy the rough hand and the rude imple- 
ments of a poor unskilled Fossor to make 
the few emblems upon the tomb, with any 
tool which would serve the purpose provided 
only he did it with a true love to Christ and 
to Christ's true followers. 

Thus in their piety — a piety formed in 
utter opposition to and in a thorough disgust 
of, the surrounding heathenism, — in this do 
we find the principal reasons for the very- 
low state of art indicated by the few speci- 
mens furnished us in the catacombs. 

But, rude as these representatives were, 
the symbol itself was almost always a beauti- 
ful and appropriate one, and the truth symbol- 
ized was the grandest or the most comforting 
truth which the Grospel reveals. And faulty 
as may have been the grammar, the spelling 
or the lettering of the inscriptions, they not- 
withstanding did generally contain the most 
elevating and beautiful sentiments. 

Grant that their taste for art or their skill 



168 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



in them was very rude, still it must be allowed 
that their Christian tastes were not unculti- 
vated. Their hearts were pervaded with the 
graces of the spirit. No sweeter or purer 
Christian sentiments were ever recorded than 
we find here and there upon the dark walls 
of the catacombs ; and though the present 
generation of Chiist's followers may have 
the advantage of them in very many respects, 
there are no epitaphs written at this day 
more appropriate or beautiful, or sweetly 
Christian than hundreds which were indited 
by the fervent piety of these primitive 
believers. 

The present generation would be gainers 
could they exchange some " modern improve- 
ments,'' of which there is much boasting, for 
some of those inward graces of character, 
the adornings of the heart, of these early 
Christians. 



THEIR SUBSEQUENT HISTORY. 169 



CHAPTER XI. 

THE SUBSEQUENT HISTORY OF THE CATACOMBS. 

FTER the Emperor Con- 
stantine had embracedChris- 
tianity, early in the fourth 
'century, he formally gave 
the catacombs to the Chris- 
tians as church property, on 
the ground that they had been al- 
ready consecrated by their use as 
the burial-place of the martyrs. 
Although persecutions had ceased, 
and the Christians might bury their dead 
wherever they pleased and with whatever 
display of funeral rites and costly monu- 
ments, they still continued to bury them in 
the catacombs. During the centuries suc- 
ceeding, many bishops of Rome were de- 
posited here and frequently distinguished 
persons were brought from a great distance, 
that they might be laid in a place made 

15 




170 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



sacred by the presence of so many distin- 
guislied saints. This practice prevailed to a 
greater or less extent for two hundred years, 
during which period very much was also 
done to enlarge and -adorn these subterra- 
nean cemeteries. During this same period, 
they were constantly visited by Christians, 
sometimes from curiosity, as by Jerome; 
more frequently for religious contemplation 
and devotion, as by Prudentius ; occasionally 
for the celebration of the love-feasts and the 
eucharist. The anniversary of the death of 
any distinguished martyr, who was buried 
there, was often observed by sacred festivities 
before his tomb. At this time, the cata- 
combs were the places most deeply interest- 
ing, and consequently the most frequented 
of all the vicinity of the city. 

But the secular power and glory of the 
Romans had been long on the decline. The 
seeds of decay were abundantly sown during 
the corrupt and tyrannic reigns of emperors, 
whose names are by- words of infamy even to 
this day. Like their rulers, the masses of 
the people had become licentious and ef- 
feminate. It was the judgment of a right- 
eous God, that doomed that empire to ruin, 



THEIR SUBSEQUENT HISTORY. 171 



wMcli had " worshipped and served the crea- 
ture more than the Creator, who is blessed 
for ever," and had wallowed in all the filthy 
lusts of reprobate hearts. Besides this, for 
two long centuries they had been shedding 
the blood of his faithful children, and doing 
their utmost to overthrow the glorious king- 
dom which Christ came upon earth to esta- 
blish. Their doom was just. "I heard 
.the angel of the waters say. Thou art right- 
eous, Lord, which art, and wast, and shalt 
be, because thou hast judged thus. For 
they have shed the blood of saints and pro- 
phets, and thou hast given them blood to 
drink ; for they are worthy. And I heard 
another out of the altar say. Even so. Lord 
God Almighty, true and righteous are thy 
judgments." 

The instrumentality used to efiTect this 
end was peculiar. As Gideon of old, " with 
thorns and briers, taught the men of Suc- 
coth," so did Jehovah correct the haughty 
and corrupt Roman nation by means of bar- 
barous tribes, which might be called the 
thorns and briers of the wilderness. Rude 
and warlike hordes, full of vigour and 
cruelty, — as the Huns, Goths, Lombards 



172 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



and Vandals, one after another poured in 
upon Italy, from the north and the north- 
east, crushing whatever came in their way, 
rioting in the luxuries which were so rare to 
them and destroying the beautifal works of 
art for which they had no taste. What the 
rushing flood of a sudden freshet in summer 
is to the richly-clad vales over which it 
sweeps, such was this terrible invasion of 
barbarism to the wealthy and luxurious 
cities of the empire. The visits of the bar- 
barians to the catacombs, were only to rifle 
them of whatever treasures were deposited 
there, or to search if any fugitives were 
there hidden from the sword. And after 
they had vanquished all opposition, as they 
did in the course of the fifth century, no- 
thing would be done by them to preserve 
the knowledge of the places where a strange 
and conquered people of a strange religion 
were buried. 

Thus these excavations which had been 
before thronged by pilgrims from all parts 
of the empire, under the iron rule of these 
northern barbarians, became more and more 
neglected. The number of visitors drawn 
tliere by curiosity or piety gradually dimin- 



THEIR SUBSEQUENT HISTORY. 173 



islied, and the number of inhabiting moles 
and oats increased, until they were almost 
the undisturbed tenants of these dark vaults. 
Robbers and bandits could there lurk in com- 
parative safety ; and there was the place for 
conspirators to meet and mature their plots 
in secresy. The walls and the dead tenants 
of the cells would not betray them. Some- 
times, also, we hear of shepherds and their 
flocks turning into some convenient open- 
ing to the catacombs, in order to pass a night 
in safety, or to avoid a driving storm. In 
some parts the earth and rock about the 
entrances caved in and entirely obstructed 
them , while in other parts, shrubs and rank 
weeds grew up and concealed them. 

When at length the conquerors submitted 
themselves to bear the Christian name and 
the priesthood had regained its authority, 
every old superstition returned with gross 
exaggeration; forms were substituted for 
faith, and legends for history. Several of 
the catacombs were then re-opened, but hap- 
pily, those consecrated by the burials of the 
earlier believers, remained either covered or 
neglected. The chief interest of the Roman 
church of the dark ages was directed to 

15* 



174 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



saints whose very existence is doubtful, or 
to those whose lives were a gloomy carica- 
ture of the gospel. A burial in the caverns, 
then regarded as most sacred, in the midst 
of altars and images and ever burning 
candles, was considered as making salvation 
sure. Many kings whose crimes had de- 
served the maledictions of their people, ex- 
pected to rise to heaven by the efficacy of 
the intercession of the holy martyrs, if their 
bbnes could be laid thus neaf them. Seve- 
ral petty kings of the Anglo-Saxon Hep- 
tarchy were buried there; Cedwalla, Con- 
rad, Offa, and Ina. Some of them expelled 
by their rivals or subjects; and some of 
them flying cowardly fi-om their posts of 
duty, leaving nations to be ruled by chil- 
dren, while they counted their beads and 
muttered the vain repetitions of formal 
prayers, in the cells of the catacombs, or of 
equally gloomy monasteries. 

They became however, again almost 
wholly disused both for worship and burial, 
during that period of Rome's greatest de- 
pression, from the eleventh to the latter part 
of the fourteenth centuries. During this 
dark period or the earlier barbarian ages, 



THEIR SUBSEQUENT HISTORY. 175 



many of the tombs were broken open, and 
the inscriptions and ornaments defaced by 
wilful violence. As some of the galleries 
have been found almost filled with sand, 
apparently carefully deposited, it has been 
supposed that some friendly hands might 
have done this to protect other graves from 
similar violation. There are a few memo- 
rials of occasional visitants even of that age, 
who left pleasant evidences of their presence 
there. In one place, a few words show that 
the Bishop of Pisa was there with compa- 
nions, early in the fourteenth century. In 
another place are six names with the sign 
of the cross after each, and under all the 
date— A. D. 1397. 

In another place, is this still more interest- 
ing record, with the date 1321 above it, and 
the names of three visitors beneath : 

GATHER TOGETHER, OH CHRISTIANS, IN THESE 
CAVERNS, TO RJEAD THE HOLY BOOKS, TO SING 
HYMNS TO THE HONOUR OF MARTYRS AND THE 
SAINTS THAT LIE HERE BURIED, HAVING DIED 
HERE IN THE LORD; TO SING PSALMS FOR THOSE 
WHO ARE NOW DYING IN THE FAITH! THERE IS 
LIGHT IN THIS DARKNESS. THERE IS MUSIC IN 
THESE TOMBS. 



176 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



During the century or more succeeding, 
there were chapels erected in the vicinity 
of some of the entrances, and much use made 
of the bones for purposes of superstition ; 
but the inner caverns even of those whose 
entrances were open, seem to have been un- 
visited. At length, in the sixteenth century, 
an unusual interest began to be felt in the 
antiquities of the church. Questions also 
m regard to relics were warmly discussed at 
Eome and elsewhere. This directed the at- 
tention of a few to the catacombs; and, 
perhaps, for the first time since their con- 
struction, they were entered by persons 
seeking to ascertain only facts, and willing 
to toil in a thorough exploration. The ex- 
amination opened to the explorers more 
than was expected, and many things quite 
different from what was anticipated. These 
antiquarians, lovers of the old and the for- 
gotten, took up the subject for their own 
gratification. Some of them spent many 
years in this underground search, gathering 
relics, copying inscriptions and paintings, 
and writing accounts of what they had seen 
and done. Some passed thus the greater 
part of their lives, leaving the volumes pre- 



THEIR SUBSEQUENT HISTORY. 177 



pared by them, to be published by survivors. 
"Father Bosio," as he was called, (who was 
the first professional miner among these 
buried antiquities,) spent more than thirty 
years in this work, the principal part of 
which was done underground, in a close 
and unpleasant atmosphere, and by torch or 
lamp light. Indeed, he lived so long under- 
ground that the light of day was at last 
painful to his eyes. When, after his death, 
his works were published, they bore this 
significant title — Subterranean Rome, 

He was followed by another indefatigable 
antiquary and enthusiast, Boldetti, who also 
spent thirty years in this work. Others of 
less distinction have continued investigations 
in that interesting field, until the present 
time. A French archaeologist, M. d'Agin- 
court, toward the close of the last century 
went to Rome to study this subject for six 
months, and he staid fifty years^ wholly oc- 
cupied all this time in collecting and arrang- 
ing the materials of a book upon this subject. 
And to show that this mine is not yet ex- 
hausted, we add that two other Frenchmen, 
Messrs. Ferret and Petit, are about to pub- 
lish the results of their long study and search 



178 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



upon these old fields, which are said to be 
as rich and interesting as any of the pre- 
ceding. 

Of the treasures which the bosom of the 
earth has yielded up in later times, for the 
instruction and pleasure of its inhabitants, 
the Christian will regard these as peculiarly 
interesting. And we have much reason for 
thankfulness to God, that these evidences 
of the faith and comparative purity of the 
early church, were thus locked up in these 
great vaults until the favourable time when 
they were opened. Had the entrances re- 
mained unobstructed through all the periods 
of barbarism, the monuments would all have 
been ruthlessly destroyed, as many of them 
were. Had they attracted more attention 
during some of the ages of gross supersti- 
tion, they would have been brought up to 
light, but would soon have been scattered 
and lost, their plainest testimony misunder- 
stood, and even perverted to the support of 
systems of falsehood. They remained se- 
curely during these centuries, as in a grand 
museum, with its doors of entrance closed. 
When at last, those doors were opened, and 
the light of the sixteenth century was let in 



THEIR SUBSEQUENT HISTORY. 179 



upon them, most of them were found enth^e, 
and as distinct, as they were when those of 
whom they were the memorials, dropped 
into their long sleep. 

A -wise providence appointed the time 
when they were opened. Many ages ago, 
the bounteous Creator moulded the rich 
veins of minerals and metals, and then laid 
them aside between the folds of the ever- 
lasting rock, to lie there in silence and 
safety; and men are now uncovering one 
after another of these full storehouses, as 
they have need of them. So did He store 
away in the bosom of the earth, beside the 
precious dust of his saints, these interesting 
records of the early Christians ; and when 
at last, the time was ripe, and the minds of 
men were awake, and they began to discuss 
the nature, and usages of the Christiaii 
church, when many were claiming that from 
the very first, it had held their erroneous 
doctrines and their semi-pagan ceremonies ; 
at this epoch, when the purity and honour 
of the church were in question, then did 
God open these hidden treasures of truth. 
Suddenly, as if almost by miracle, there 
sprung from the dark bosom of the earth, a 



180 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



testimony in regard to the simplicity, purity, 
and piety of the primitive church, which has 
no parallel except in the books of the New 
Testament. Even the infidel stands abashed 
and silent before these beautiful and incon- 
trovertible evidences of Christianity. He is 
forced to acknowledge these, because the 
course of argument which would discredit 
them, would require him to give up at once 
all that he believes concerning the characters 
and events in the secular history of Rome 
during the same period. 




Caligula, fourth Emperor of Rome. 



PERVERSIONS OF THESE DISCOVERIES. 181 



CHAPTER Xn. 

PERVERSIONS OF THESE DISCOVERIES. 

In the book of Job we are told, that on 
the day when the sons of God came to pre- 
sent themselves before the Lord, Satan came 
also among them. The history of the church 
too often illustrates this almost constant 
presence of evil with good. JSTo better proof 
can be found of this, than the gross and 
wicked misuse which many who professed 
to be Christians, made of these interesting 
discoveries. Instead of copying in their 
own hearts, and in their religious services, 
the purity and simplicity of the primitive 
Christians, which every relic of these ancient 
times indicated, they used (or rather abused) 
these relics in such a way as to make the 
ignorant still more blind and superstitious, 
and thus to render the whole church of 
Christ, as far as they were able to do it, still 
more unlike the primitive and holy model. 

16 



182 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



We have already mentioned the supersti- 
tious use made of the remains found in those 
small portions of the catacombs which were 
visited by the monks of the Middle Ages. 
But as soon as their contents became known 
by the later researches of which we have 
spoken, a course of outrage and fraud com- 
menced, which we set forth in the graphic 
language of another. 

''It was not till the sixteenth century,'* 
excepting as before stated, "that the evi- 
dence of their existence and their uses called 
attention to them, and the interest and im- 
portance of the subject were forced upon the 
lazy and slumbering inmates of the innu- 
merable convents of Rome. And even then 
they were destined to be desecrated by a 
use that could scarcely have been anticipated. 
They were invaded by innumerable bands 
of monks and friars,- collecting from their 
graves the bones of the long-buried dead, 
disturbing the mouldering relics of mor- 
tality, dragging them into the upper world, 
hawking them from city to city and fi'ora 
country to country, and driving an execra- 
ble traffic in them under the name of relics. 
Every grave was rifled, every skeleton was 



PERVERSIONS OF THESE DISCOVERIES. 183 



rent asunder, every bone was pounded in 
order to multiply splinters ; and when once 
the grave of some martyr or saint was said 
to be discovered, the head was severed and 
sent to one country, and the leg was severed 
and sent to another ; an arm was forwarded 
to one land and a thigh to another ; a tooth 
was extracted from the skull and sent to 
some convent, and a rib, severed from the 
back, sent to some monastery. And, at the 
same time, a traffic of the most disgraceful 
and degrading nature was carried on in all 
these, as lawful articles of ecclesiastical mer- 
chandise ! The demand for such articles was 
so great in the superstition and ignorance of 
the times, and the miraculous properties of 
such relics were so extravagantly extolled, 
as of incalculable advantage to the temporal 
and spiritual interest of the possessors, that 
the demand of the market soon called forth 
an adequate supply ; and such was the un- 
scrupulousness of the authorities at Rome, 
and so utterly profligate the monks who 
were the merchants in this matter, that they 
not unfrequently sold several difterent skulls 
as the only true skull of some particular 
martyr, and several difierent arms as the 



184 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



veritable arms of some favourite saint, so 
that even at the present day, some saints 
have several different heads and arms in dif- 
ferent places. Now and then the traveller , 
in Italy discovers some martyr who has had 
two or three heads, and some saint who has 
had four or five arms, and perhaps a still 
greater superfluity of legs. The enormous 
amount of wealth which this traffic brought 
to Rome is almost incredible. The cata- 
combs, as a mine of bones, proved incom- 
parably more precious than if they had been 
a mine of silver." 

The following is narrated as an instance 
of the deception which has been practised 
upon the ignorant, through the avarice or 
the ignorance of the Papal clergy. They 
happened to find a grave in the catacombs 
bearing this inscription, 

JULIA EVODIA ERECTED THIS TO HER FAITHFUL 
MOTHER. 

It was accompanied with certain letters which 
showed it at once to be a pagan epitaph. 
But the priests were either too ignorant to 
understand the meaning of these letters, or 
they were at that time in particular need of 
a new saint in their calendar, and a new 



PERVERSIONS OF THESE DISCOVERIES. 185 



stock of relics in their market ; and so they 
at once christened the heathen sleeper as 
St. Evoflia, and sold her bones and all that 
pertained to her grave, as relics of a saint 
and martyr ! In their ignorance they com- 
mitted another blunder. It was not the per- 
son buried, but her daughter that placed the 
stone there, whose name was Evodia ; so that 
they made a heathen into a saint, and put 
,the living in place of the dead, and gave the 
daughter's name to her mother ! 

It mattered little, however, since the relics 
sold well, and fanned the superstition of the 
purchaser, while they filled the coffers of the 
seller. 

But this evil became so outrageous, that 
all sensible minds at length revolted against 
it. Many, even of the monks, had too much 
conscience to assist in it ; and some openly 
protested against it. When at length Luther 
arose, this abominable traffic in spurious re- 
lics of imaginary martyrs was one of the 
many foul spots in the Papal church which 
he uncovered to public view, the exposure 
of which was very effectual in turning the 
hearts of thousands from that corrupt system, 
and preparing them to desire, and then to 

16* 



186 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



take part in a "reformation/' But in de- 
fiance of the contempt of all intelligent ob- 
servers, and of the fearful denunciations of 
God against such sacrilegious frauds, this 
ridiculous and impious farce is re-enacted 
occasionally at the present day, and in all its 
original absurdity. Take as a specimen the 
following more full account of a transaction, 
to which we have before referred, which oc- 
curred but a few months ago, and notices- 
of which may be found in a recent journal, 
religious anJ secular. 

Amiens is a city in the north of France, a 
few leagues from Paris. The Roman bishop 
of Amiens, named Salinis, was desu^ous, it 
seems, of reviving the piety and the enthu- 
siasm of the faithful in his diocese, and 
therefore he went to Rome to procure some 
sacred relic w^hich he might bring back for 
the benefit of the faithful in his flock. 

The pope was pleased with his zeal, and 
immediately ordered search to be made in 
the catacombs, peradventure something 
might be discovered which would answer 
the purpose of the pious bishop. In due 
time, the pope's agents announced their 
having discovered a cell closed by a flat 



PERVERSIONS OF THESE DISCOVERIES. 187 



stone, with an inscription which they trans- 
lated thus : 

THEODOSIA, 

BORN AT AMIENS. 

ERECTED BY HER HUSBAND, AURELITIS OPTATTJS. 

They also certified from tokens interpreted 
by themselves, that she was a martyr, and 
therefore her relics were of a superior order. 

Surely it was very fortunate, that without 
the trouble of costly explorations in before 
unopened catacombs, but in parts easy of 
access, and upon a short search, there should 
be found for the bishop of Amiens a mar- 
tyr's grave untouched, and that martyr one 
that had been born in his own city ! And 
quite as fortunate it was, that the bones of 
this saint should have been found essentially 
entire, after a burial of fifteen hundred years ! 
This miraculous preservation of the bodies 
is however, one of the signs of saintship ; 
almost equal to the sweet odour of their 
bones, so often certified by these priestly 
plunderers of tombs and charnel houses. 

It should be remarked in passing, that the 
Latin inscription upon the tablet produced 
by the Roman priests, does not in fact state 
I hat the dead was born at Amiens. The 



188 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



words so translated apply grammatically only 
to the husband, and mean only that he was 
of the nation or tribe called ^' Ambian," from 
which tribe the city of Amiens was perhaps 
named. Nor does the epitaph contain evi- 
dence that she was even a Christian. But 
leaving these questions (although they are 
important for the investigation and settle- 
ment of all bone worshippers,) the result was, 
that the bones were carefully placed in a box 
made for the purpose, which box was then 
bound with a red silken cord and carefully 
sealed; then two delegates were sent from 
France, one an ecclesiastic and the other of 
noble rank, to transport the precious freight 
to Amiens ; and in due time their august 
commission was fulfilled without any acci- 
dent or delay ! 

The dajT- on which this box entered 
Amiens, the pious bishop declared to be the 
finest and the most glorious day of his life ! 
In the presence of a solemn assembly con- 
vened for the purpose, this august box was 
opened and the sacred relics were found to 
be in perfect order. Of course there was 
great rejoicing among the faithful. Dis- 
courses were pronounced by priests, of 



PERVERSIONS OF THESE DISCOVERIES. 189 



which the following may be taken as a fair 
specimen. 

''Blessed be God, the author of every per- 
fect gift, who fulfils our ardent wishes, and 
brings back among us, after an interval of 
fifteen centuries, the body of St. Theodosia 
crowned with the- glory of saints and the 
palm of martyrs. Theodosia, restored to our 
veneration, shall shed upon the episcopal 
city and the whole country her favours, shall 
remove from us calamities and fears, shall 
preserve us in faith," &c., &c. 

Some of the citizens of Amiens, perhaps, 
had rashly expressed doubts whether this 
Theodosia was indeed the saint and martyr 
they claimed her to be, and others may have 
questioned the expediency of reviving at 
this late day, the superstitious regard for 
relics. To such the indignant Salinis re- 
plied : — 

"Pious Christians need not examine after 
the church has decided. True science ab- 
stains from judging after the holy see, be- 
cause it knows with what wisdom, with what 
maturity, the holy see proceeds in its judg- 
ments. Rome is aided by Grod in regulating 
the catholic world ! 



190 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



"Are you Christians or are you not? If 
you are not Christians, I pity you : the most 
wonderful pages found in the history of man- 
kind are hidden from you. If j^ou are Chris- 
tians, honour St. Theodosia, for she suffered 
martyrdom, and the martja^s continue the 
work of the Saviour ; they discharge man's 
part in the work of redemption. They are, 
after Jesus Christ, Ohrists who open suc- 
cessively by the cross, heaven to all branches 
of the human family !" 

A martjT thus completes for us the work 
of redemption which Christ begun ! 

And when the church of Rome tells us 
that any bone picked up in her quarries, is 
the bone of a saint and martyr, and sliould 
be enshrined in holy altars for reverence, 
her assertion is proof sufficient; she judges 
with the wisdom of God, and we ought to 
submit ! 

On the 12th of October last, occurred the 
great religious, military, and civic festival in 
honour of St. Theodosia. Three cardinals 
and twenty-seven archbishops and bishops 
were present. Cardinal Wiseman was there, 
as the representative and head of the Roman 
Catholics of England, with two Romish arch- 



PERVERSIONS OF THESE DISCOVERIES. 191 



bishops from Ireland. There was also an 
archbishop from South America; others 
from Belgium, Germany, and Switzerland. 
About fifteen hundred vicars and curates 
accompanied the prelates. The weather was 
very unfavourable at first, but the zealous 
admirers of the new saint were sure she 
would work a miracle, rather than have her 
festival marred by the rain, and so they say, 
that at the precise moment when the car- 
riage which bore the sacred relics began to 
move, the clouds broke away and a delight- 
ful day succeeded ! 

"A vast crowd encumbered the city. The 
railroad trains brought in travellers innu- 
merable. All the streets were adorned witli 
green garlands, flowers, and rich carpets. 
Girls clothed in white robes represented 
angels, and threw bouquets in the path as 
the procession advanced. There were tri- 
umphal arches, masts crowned with blue, 
red, and white flags. The vaults of these 
arches were covered with gold and silver 
stars. Statues, pictures, banners, and boxes 
of relics were borne in the procession. A 
squadron of cavalry and companies of in- 
fantry opened the march, for no popish festi- 



192 ' THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



val is without soldiers. Then came the mu- 
sicians, monks and nuns, canons and vicars- 
general, while bishops and cardinals followed, 
displaying their respective badges. At last 
appeared the wonderful gilt coach carrying 
the relics of St. Theodosia ! This coach was 
covered with inscriptions, and bore a colossal 
statue of the Virgin Mary. The prefect of 
the department, and many officers and magis- 
trates figured in the procession, probably by 
order of the government. In the evening 
the city was splendidly illuminated. 

" "When the relics of St. Theodosia entered 
the Cathedral, Cardinal Wiseman ascended 
the pulpit and pronounced a discourse, in 
which he compared the removal of Theodo- 
sia's remains to Amiens, to that of the pa- 
triarch Joseph's bones from Egypt to the 
land of Canaan, (Joshua xxiv. 32.) He sup- 
poses that Theodosia had asked of God when 
she was dying, that her bones might be 
brought to her native city, and that God 
l^ad heard her prayer! He further an- 
nounced that the new saint would certainly 
work miracles, to reward the devotion of the 
citizens of Amiens. The discourse of Car- 
dinal Wiseman was altogether in keeping 



PERVERSIONS OF THESE DISCOVERIES. 193 



with the spirit and sentiments of the atten- 
dants of this senseless mummery." 

But we forbear. For a proper closing 
paragraph of this chapter, we return to the 
vicinity of the catacombs. We will linger 
for a moment in the church of St. Sebastian, 
built over their principal entrance. On its 
inner wall stands conspicuously an inscrip- 
tion, declaring that '^whoever shall have 
entered the catacombs" (that is, through 
that church, and with the rites, penances, 
and payments, there required by the priests,) 
'' shall obtain plenary remission of all his 
sins, through the merits of 174,000 holy 
martyrs, and of forty-six high pontiffs, like- 
wise martyrs," who are there interred ! No 
better illustration can be given than this of 
the fearful contrast between the early church 
founded by '' strangers of Rome," in the faith 
and spirit of the day of Pentecost, and in- 
structed for every good word and work by 
the great apostle of the Gentiles, — and the 
corrupt church now seated upon the same 
seven'^iiills, " arrayed in purple and scarlet, 
and decked with gold and precious stones, 
and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand 
full of abominations." 

17 



194 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



CHAPTER X] 



PRESENT CONDITION OF THE CATACOMBS. 

The Campagna is a name given to the ex- 
tensive plains varied with many slight eleva- 
tions, in the vicinity of the city of Rome. 
In ancient times this broad region was fertile, 
and as highly cultivated as a garden. Heavy 
crops of grain or grass waved in summer 
upon every part of it, furnishing to the im- 
mense population of the city, no inconsider- 
able portion of their sustenance. At the same 
time, the industrious miners were pushing 
their excavations beneath in every direction, 
in search of materials for building; so that 
there was almost as much activity beneath 
the soil, as among the husbandmen upon 
the surface. But now the Campagna is as 
uncultivated and lonely as a desert. It bears 
the marks of the curse, as plainly as Edom 
or Babylon. During the proper seed time 
of the year, it exhales from its soil a malaria 



THEIR PRESENT CONDITION. 195 



which is destructive to the health of all who 
breathe it for even a few days. 

A poor industrious peasant may plough 
and sow there, but another will probably 
reap the harvest— his own reward being only 
a fatal fever. Almost the only use now 
made of this large tract is for the pasturage 
of a few animals, which, from their unre- 
strained range, are as wild as those untamed 
in their native wilderness, and dangerous to 
the unarmed traveller. The surface has be- 
come, in some places, marshj^, and in others 
grown over with weeds and bushes. The 
stranger, walking over it now, can hardly 
believe that it was ever the scene of so much 
industry and life as it was when Roman hus- 
bandry cultivated every rood of it, except 
the spaces reserved for the musterings or the 
encampments of the Roman armies. 

As he passes over it, he will observe here 
and there sunken places or hollows where 
the roofing of the catacombs beneath has giv- 
en way ; and occasionally if he looks care- 
fully among the thick bushes or under the 
rank coarse weeds, he will discover a dark 
hole, through which, if he has sufficient 
courage, he may descend into some of these 



196 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



subterranean vaults. These sunken places 
and hidden pits render it dangerous to walk 
or ride, without great care, in any part of 
the Campagna, except on the travelled high- 
ways. And even when thus careful, the 
wanderer can never feel quite secure, when 
he considers that the thin rock beneath him 
may become too weak for supporting itself, 
and may sink at the moment when he is 
passing. 

One who is familiar with that whole region, 
thus writes concerning it. 

''Many a time the wanderer of the Cam- 
pagna, the desolate Campagna — comes sud- 
denly upon some deep hole — some dark hol- 
low, which if explored, will be found to be 
one of the innumerable entrances to these 
quarries, or at least, one of the spots where 
,the superincumbent soil has sunk in, and 
perhaps closed some branch of the catacombs 
forever. Indeed, this sudden falling in of 
the earth after heavy rains, severe frosts, and 
occasional tremblings of an earthquake, has 
been a source of much danger. Tales are 
carefully narrated of scenes too horrible to 
describe here, of those who heedlessly and 
without competent guides have entered these 



THEIR PRESENT CONDITION. 197 



subterranean regions. The earth falling in 
has crushed or smothered some, while it has 
debarred forever all exit for others, who have 
been left there to perish miserably. They 
who thus sought the catacombs as the grave- 
place of others, found them only a grave for 
themselves." 

Thus much for their present appearance 
upon the surface. Let us now, in imagina- 
tion, follow the visitor as he descends beneath 
it. We will delay, however, a little at the 
entrance of the catacombs, while we make 
a few explanations. 

The most convenient entrance at present 
is from the church of the Convent of St. 
Sebastian, which stands upon the famous 
Appian Way, about two miles southeast from 
the gate of the city. This highway received 
its name from the Censor, Appius Csecus, 
who began it about three hundred years 
before Christ. It was as nearly straight and 
level as possible, vdde enough for two chariots 
to go abreast, paved with square blocks of 
hard stone brought from a great distance, 
and these blocks were so nicely fitted together 
as to seem to be one broad smooth rock. 
This noble work was so thoroughly done 

17* 



198 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



that, after two thousand years, use, it stands, 
in some places, perfect as ever. 

On this ancient and famous road stands 
the church of St. Sebastian, placed it is said 
directly above that part of the catacombs in 
which St. Sebastian was buried. He is sup- 
posed to have lived in the third century and 
to have suffered martyrdom under Diocletian. 
The tradition is, that he was bound naked 
to a tree, and then that archers pierced his 
body until it bristled with arrows, but that 
he was preserved from death or recovered 
from it by miracle ; that he then voluntarily 
appeared again before the pagan tribunal 
confessing his faith and was beheaded for it. 
These useless miracles are very numerous 
in the Roman martyrology; sometimes the 
executioner is represented as exhausting 
almost all the various modes of capital 
punishment before his victim condescer^ds 
to die. St. Sebastian is one of the most 
popular of the saints at Rome : not so much 
from any thing extraordinary in the saint 
himself, as from his being so usefal and fine 
a subject for the pencils of the artists. 
Paintings of his maityrdom, or rather of the 
first scene of it, are very common. 



THEIR PRESENT CONDITION. 199 



We can best convey to the reader a vivid 
idea of tlie present aspect of the catacombs, 
as well as of the common method of visiting 
them, by quoting at some length from one 
who made the descent in person. The quota- 
tion will also throw light upon the ignorance 
and extreme credulity of a portion of the 
Papal church amid all the light of the 
nineteenth century. 

" The monk who acted as guide or ciceroni 
on our visit to these interesting scenes was 
selected for his office with admirable judg- 
ment and as admirable taste. * * * There 
he waSj an attenuated thing, a living skeleton, 
with his brown cloak around him to conceal 
the bones from view ; you might fancy you 
could almost see the light of the candles 
shining through his ribs; and withal, he 
looked a meek and subdued man, one who 
spoke with vivacity — indeed with enthusiasm 
though his voice was toned with a sad and 
melancholy cadence. He was very calm, 
thoughtful and silent if left to himself, but 
exceedingly animated and communicative 
when questioned. He spoke in raptures 
of the subterranean chapel, and gave all real 
and needful information, as well as a good 



200 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



deal that was unrealj respecting the cata- 
combs, that the general visitor could require. 
He supplied each of our party with a lighted 
candle. He led the way himself with steps 
slow and solemn, and as stealthy as if he 
feared to disturb the slumbers of the dead. 
On he moved, or rather glided, through those 
dark passages and damp galleries, looking 
for all the world like a ghost ; and, but for 
the color of his brown monkish dress, with 
his thin, haggard, attenuated look, and at 
the same time his earnest, impressive man- 
ner, he might well have passed for one of 
the ancient inhabitants of the catacombs 
called again to life. He would stop at times 
and carefully explain all the details of some 
grave more remarkable than the rest, and at 
other times he would pause, hold his candle 
in one hand, and mysteriously point with his 
other bony hand to some spot or object — look 
unutterably mysterious, and then drop his 
eyes to the ground, and pass on T\dthout 
another word. And then, when all was 
over, he looked so poor and sad — so miser- 
able and meek, and stood so modestly look- 
ing for the gratuity usually given on these 
occasions, with an expression that seemed 



THEIR PRESENT CONDITION. 201 



designed to move the visitor to more than 
ordinary liberality, that there really was no 
resisting the incomparable acting of his silent 
begging. Poor man! he earns hardly the 
money he receives.'' * '^ * On asking our 
emaciated and ghostly guide for the signs 
by which he could ascertain the grave of a 
Christian from that of a heathen, he replied 
by pointing to little crosses scratched on the 
wall beside or above the graves. He pro- 
nounced these to be the signs of the Chris- 
tian faith of the departed dead. This seemed 
reasonable ; but it occurred at the moment 
that, as these catacombs were in the posses- 
sion of these monks for some centuries, so 
they could scratch these crosses over any 
number of graves that might seem desirable. 
It was clear they could never be detected, 
and the character of monks has never been 
such as to secure them from all suspicion of 
'pious frauds.' 

" This appeared still more probable when, 
having lingered a little behind our party in 
order to examine some grave more accurately, 
I observed a gentleman occupying himself 
the mean time in making these crosses with 
the iron end of his walking-stick! We 



202 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



agreed that there was no appearance of differ- 
ence between these and the other crosses, 
and so our young friend amused himself 
with making a few more ; and when we left 
the catacombs, he congratulated himself on 
having made half a dozen saints or Christians 
at least during his visit ! 

"I was particularly anxious to learn the 
means by which the monks were able to 
ascertain the bones of a saint — the bones of 
a martyr — from the bones of an ordinary 
Christian, As the catacombs were the great 
treasure-house of relics, I wished to learn 
the tests or signs by which those bones which 
were to be venerated as relics of saints were 
to be discerned from the bones of others. * 
* * * I resolved therefore to ask the question 
amid the dark vaults and dreary graves of 
the catacombs, and to obtain my answer 
amid the fleshless skeletons and long-silent 
bones of the primitive Christians. 

" The poor attenuated skeleton of a monk 
who seemed to me as pious as he was poor, 
and as sincere as he was attenuated, stated 
that one sign was a red mark which was 
sometimes observed beside a grave. This 
he said was the blood of the martyr which was 



THEIR PRESENT CONDITION. 203 



thus sprinkled on this spot in order to remain 
as a sign of martyrdom. Another sign was 
a small bottle which was found at many- 
graves but not at all. This bottle was found 
to contain some deposit of a reddish hue, 
which it has been inferred was blood — the 
blood of the person there buried, and who 
therefore must have died the death of a 
martyr. 

"It at once suggested itself that it was an 
easy matter for the monks to multiply the 
number of their images whenever they were 
in need of a new supply of relics for the 
market, as they had only to place a red mark 
upon any grave, or deposit one of these little 
terra cotta bottles beside it. I felt that at 
least I could have no great dependence on 
them, even supposing the signs were real 
and not fictitious ; for there is no authority 
no ground whatever — not the shadow of 
authority or ground for supposing that either 
the red spot or the bottle are signs of mar- 
tyrdom or saintship any more than of that 
Christianity which holds salvation by the 
blood of the cross. If they are signs of 
any thing particular, they seem rather the 
the sign of men who died depending on the 



204 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



blood of Christ, and whose surviving friends 
gave to their graves that sign of their faith. 
The truth is, no dependence v^hatever can 
be placed on these signs; and I afterward 
found they were laughed at by the more 
learned clergy of Rome. 

^^Our interesting but credulous guide 
seemed fully to believe what he was stating ; 
and when I inquired as to the tests or signs of 
a saint, — the means by which the bones of a 
saint — not a martyr but a saint — might be 
discerned from the bones of an ordinary 
Christian, he replied with the most perfect 
simplicity that when they were first dis- 
covered, they emitted a pleasant odor— a de- 
licious fragrance, that ravished the senses; 
and as this certainly was not the ordinary 
property of dead men's bones, it seemed to 
argue — if true — something most marvellous 
and saintly. But this was not all. When 
these bones were brought forth into the 
upper world, they wrought the most wonder- 
ful miracles : the sick were healed, the dead 
were raised, the heretics were converted at 
the touch or sight of these bones, thus de- 
monstrated to be the relics of some saint. 

'' There is one instance on record. It was 



THEIR PRESENT CONDITION. 205 



the case of a skull — a fleshless, eyeless, 
tongueless, noseless skull. It was questioned, 
after certain exorcisms, as to the rightful 
owner, and it answered its name, its resi- 
dence, and told the circumstances under 
which its owner was decapitated, dying a 
martyr's death! What other persons may 
think of such marvellous doings — such ex- 
quisite perfumes from bones, and such in- 
teresting colloquies from skulls, it is not for 
me to determine. The poor monk who 
guided us through these dreary catacombs 
seemed religiously to believe them, and he 
was not singular in doing so. The enlight- 
ened portion of the ecclesiastical body, how- 
ever, are quite as unbelieving as Protestants 
on these particulars." 

Our extract contains some expressions of 
levity, perhaps unseasonable ; and the reader 
should not forget to distinguish between the 
easy work of modern imposture and the 
inimitable marks of genuine antiquity on 
the tablets we have transcribed. But the 
facts stated in this extract authorize us to 
infer that the Papal church will not be likely 
to lack members so long as such extreme 
ignorance and credulity can be found united ; 

18 



206 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



nor will those members be likely to lack 
patron saints or relics so long as an unscru- 
pulous priesthood have possession of the 
catacombs. 

Let us, in imagination, continue our wan- 
derings a little farther in these subterranean 
labyrinths before we return to the sweet light 
of day. We have been contemplating the 
impositions which are practised upon the 
credulous and the ignorant in regard to these 
catacombs and their contents. We will 
now refresh om' eyes and our hearts by a 
scene of undoubted antiquity — records of un- 
questionable veracity, and then take our final 
leave of the catacombs. 

Having passed beyond the bounds of other 
visitors, both of the superstitious and the 
curious, we find in an obscure branch of an 
unfrequented crypt, a tomb which has never 
been opened. We wipe away the dust and 
mould which, for fifteen hundred years, have 
been gathering upon the tablet which closes 
the tomb, and after considerable study, we 
succeed in making out this inscription in 

Latin : — 

\ 

VALERIA SLEEPS IN PEACE ! 



THEIR PRESENT CONDITION. 207 



The name indicates that the sleeper was a 
female. We infer she was young from the 
fact tha.t nothing is said of her family con- 
nections. The spirit as well as the words of 
the inscription prove that she was a Christian. 
No heathen would ever have said or thought 
so sweet a thing of death as that it is only a 
peaceful sleep. And these four words — per- 
haps no human eye has read them or human 
heart drunk in their consolation till now, 
since her weeping relatives paid a last sad 
adieu to her tomb, and went away comforted 
by the thought that this sleep would ere long 
end and she would arise refreshed to be for- 
ever with the Lord. 

This inscription is written upon the stone 
slab or tablet which closes the mouth of her 
grave. Now let us carefully break out the 
lower portion of this slab, so as to leave the 
inscription entire, and still give us the op- 
portunity of looking within ; — very carefully, 
as if we almost expected her to revive, at 
the entrance of the light. And what do we 
see ? No bone, no remains of dress or orna- 
ment ; nothing startling, nothing interesting 
apparently, nothing in fact except the dust 



208 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 




which has accumulated upon the bottom of 
the grave. 

But is not that dust arranged rather 
strangely? Observe it carefully. Does it 
not bear some resemblance to the shadow 
which a skeleton would cast upon the floor? 
Does it not appear as if a skeleton had there 
dissolved into fine dust which then fell and 
still remains undisturbed, exactly as it fell ? 
It is indeed so : we can not resist the con- 
clusion — we do not wish to resist the conclu- 
sion, that there lies the precious dust of one 
of the early Christians of Rome ! 

We will not, like the Papists, fancy that 
a fragrance as of incense arises from this 
tomb of a saint. But if our senses are not 
addressed with a pleasant odour, the heart is 
touched with a most pleasing reflection: 



THEIR PRESENT CONDITION. 209 



"Precious m the sight of the Lord, is the 
death of his saints !" 

But who was this Valeria, whose mortal 
part has here lain in sweet repose for fifteen 
or seventeen hundred years ? No one now 
knows, but Christ who has her name written 
in his book of remembrance. 

She could not have been one of those who 
sufifered during the first persecution, being 
burned at night as torches to illumine the 
gardens of Nero ; — for then her ashes would 
have been washed into the Tiber and thence 
carried into the sea. She was not given to 
the lions in the Coliseum during some later 
persecution, as thousands of her faith, and 
of her sex were ; — for then the dust of her 
mangled body, or of the fragments of it, 
would not have formed so perfect an outline. 
She probably died and was deposited here 
during a time of peace to the Christian 
church. She may have been a daughter of 
some poor Fossor, or of some other of the 
common people who heard of Christ so 
gladly. Possibly she may have been of the 
family of Narcissus or of Aristobulus, to 
whom the great apostle sent Christian salu- 
tations in his epistle to the church of Christ 
18* 



210 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



at Rome ; or she may have been one of those 
in the household of Csesar, who sent theii 
message of love to Christian friends at Phil- 
ippi, in Paul's Epistle to them. She may 
have heard that noble apostle preach Christ 
and Him crucified, and she may have been 
one of those who visited Paul "in his own 
hired house" and kindly ministered to him 
while he was awaiting his trial, — and may 
she not have stood by, trembling and in tears 
when he suffered martyrdom for his Lord's 
sake ? But whatever were her good deeds, 
or her sufierings, her Saviour has not for- 
gotten them. And although we know 
nothing else of her history with certaintj^, 
one fact and that the grand fact, is plainly 
recorded : — that she fell asleep in Jesus ; — 
and hence, when He shall come again, her 
dust will rise, not as it was buried, nor ever 
again to be buried, — but in beauty, honour 
and glory, immortal and incorruptible, a fit 
companion for her ransomed and sanctified 
spirit, and thus united to be forever with 
the Lord. 

How intense would be the interest with 
which we should visit the catacombs, if all 
the sleepers were in their places, each be- 



THEIR PRESENT CONDITION. 211 



hind or beneath his own name and epitaph, 
and we could know as we passed along, 
that all things remained as they were left 
by the early Christians ! What place on 
earth could equal it in interest, excepting 
only the land where the blessed Eedeemer 
lived and suffered ! 

But the principal objects of interest found 
in the catacombs that have been colored, 
have been removed to the Vatican and to 
other museums. Every accessible crypt has 
been examined, the graves rifled, and the 
inscribed tablets removed. The catacombs 
now open, are therefore little more than a 
forsaken mine, or as an old grave-yard from 
which the coffins and tombstones have been 
transferred to a new cemetery. 

"While writing this chapter, there comes 
to the author's hand a letter from an Ame- 
rican clergyman at Rome, giving a brief 
sketch of his recent visit to these deserted 
abodes. 

''My friends, who had made themselves 
familiar with every object of interest, were 
my guides to all the wonders of both ancient 
and modern Rome. They led me also be- 
neath the surface of things, and showed mo 



212 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



the tombs of the Scipios, and the catacombs, 
those mysterious excavations, which have 
been the cemeteries of the dead and the 
sanctuaries of the hving. An old ' monk 
with a dim candle, which made the darkness 
and his own ugliness the more formidable, 
conducted us through long passages cut from 
solid rock, which seemed to be endless pas- 
sages leading to nothing but empty shelves 
for coffins, and tabular stones with inscrip- 
tions dating back to the Christian era, and 
at last, he brought us out by another way 
from the entrance, ^nd we breathed freely 
again on coming into the upper air." 

He adds strong expressions of the gloomy 
aspect of these subterranean caverns. But, 
however deserted and gloomy these cata- 
combs may now be, they w^ill never be other 
than interesting to the thoughtful Christian. 
It will still be true, that there the primitive 
Christians laboured, and thitber they fled for 
refuge; that there they worshipped and 
were buried; and that these now naked 
walls were once adorned with the sweetest 
memorials of Christian faith and hope which 
the world has ever seen. These were proba- 
bly the earliest sculptured records of that 



THEIR PRESENT CONDITION. 213 



peculiar peace which the rehgion of Jesus 
Christ sheds abroad in the behever's heart, 
as he stands beside the graves of those who 
died in the Lord: the earhest sculptured 
records of the power of a Christian faith in 
giving the believer a victory over death. 

Before we return to the upper air, let us 
take one- more walk through these mj^ste- 
rious caverns, giving free rein to reflection 
as we pass along. 

Here, at this opening nearest the city, the 
ancient Romans began to cut out the tufa 
or puzzolana for building their houses and 
temples, bridges and aqueducts, or for the 
new wall around their young and thriving 
city. Farther in, are excavations of a later 
period. Here the poor, industrious Chris- 
tians wrought with their own hands, the day 
being turned into night to them. And yet 
often the night shone as the day ; for while 
at their lonely work, some Christian bro- 
ther, or perhaps their faithful pastor came 
down to talk with them of the Saviour's 
love ; bringing tidings, perhaps, of the " acts 
of the then living apostles,'' in their great 
missionary work. By their dim lamps, one 
of these welcome visitors may have read to 



214 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



them passages wMcli lie had copied from 
the beloved John's description of heaven, 
in the last chapters of the Apocalj^se, — the 
first transcript of which had been just re- 
ceived from Patmos or Ephesus. The fact 
that the Redeemer had sent such comforting 
messages to his churches, through "the dis- 
ciple whom He loved,'' was to them an as- 
surance not only that He loved them still, 
but that He would save them from the hands 
of all their enemies. How could they but 
be comforted in this darkness, and the?e toils, 
and sufferings, as they listened to the words 
uttered by the blessed Redeemer only a few 
months before, to the prisoner in Patmos : — 
''There shall be no night there; and they 
need no candle, neither light of the sun ; for 
the Lord God giveth them light : and they 
shall reign forever and ever." 

And thus they lived and laboured here, 
in hope of the heavenly rest; and when 
their toils were over, their bodies were 
brought down by Christian friends and laid 
here, in some recess which they had them- 
selves excavated. By their side, at a later 
period, their children were brought and 
buried ; the parents and the children having, 



THEIR PRESENT CONDITION. 215 



perhaps, been tortured unto death for the 
name of the Lord Jesus. 

In the small crypt to which we next come, 
the family of a distinguished Christian lay 
concealed for several weeks " till the indig- 
nation was overpast,'* their Christian friends 
coming to them by night with supplies of 
food. While concealed in this recess, God 
was their better refuge, their safer hiding- 
place. 

In this wider excavation, the fugitive dis- 
ciples were wont to assemble for worship on 
the Sabbath. Some came from their hiding- 
places in these labyrinths, and others from 
above ground, the last having entered the 
catacombs singly, at different places, taking 
care that they are not followed or seen by 
their watchful enemies. Thus, in this sub- 
terranean chapel where we now stand, did a 
few of the faithful often assemble, and though 
their prayers and praises were spoken so 
low, as not to be heard by the pagans who 
were passing over their heads, they were all 
heard and accepted on high. The temple 
which Solomon built, or that which Titus 
destroyed, were not more honoured places 
than this ! 



216 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



PiiG&ing along, we come to a more highly 
vaulted passage, where the recesses upon the 
sides are more carefully finished. Here were 
depoGited the remains of bishops during the 
reign of Constantino, and for a century or 
more afterward. The storm of persecution 
having now subsided, the Christians pre- 
pared these tombs in the manner they con- 
sidered most honourable to the dead. Here 
also, and during this same period, devout 
Christians were wont to come for meditation 
and prayer, and for the quickening of their 
piety, by standing near the ashes of distin- 
guished saints and martyrs. 

Occasionally, they assembled here upon 
the Sabbath morning to celebrate their love- 
feasts, and perhaps the eucharist, and on the 
anniversary of the 'death of some eminent 
saint or martyr, multitudes came to his 
grave to honour his memory. There were 
rapidly increasing the rites of a weak super- 
stition ; but the heart was still warm with 
the love of Christ, and acknowledged no 
other Saviom\ 

A sudden change came: the rude Goth 
and his barbarous brethren stalk along these 
aisles in stupid wonder ; unable to read any 



THEIR PRESENT CONDITION. 217 



of these sacred words ; having no pleasant 
associations with the expressive emblems 
sculptured upon these tombs. Here and 
there, they break out the tablet which closes 
a grave, hoping to find some piece of metal, 
utensil, or implement which they may turn 
to account in their rude mode of life. And 
then, perhaps, this long vault was left un- 
visited for a thousand years, during which 
weary period, no ray of light shone upon 
any of these records, no foot trod upon this 
solid pavement, no voice echoed along these 
chambers, no noise whatever was heard here, 
except, perhaps, the faint sound of footsteps 
over the surface of the ground above, or the 
deep roar of the earthquake. By this deser- 
tion, this portion of the catacombs escaped 
desecration by the gross and puerile super- 
stitions of the Middle Ages. 

At last, and about three hundred years 
ago, this sleep of a thousand years was bro- 
ken. At the call of God, these vaults 
yielded up the secrets of their dead. This 
long silence uttered -a voice, and that voice 
bore witness to the truth. It spake to the 
world many things concerning times, and 
persons, and experiences, and events of 

19 



218 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



whicli we must have been comparatively ig- 
norant but for this testimony. Henceforth, 
therefore, the catacombs of Rome, although 
rifled and deserted, will yet always be re- 
garded with interest, as the faithful deposi- 
tories, for more than a thousand perilous 
years, of the most unquestionable as well as 
beautiful evidences of the piety and pmity, 
the sufferings and the triumphs of the early 
Christian church. 




G>ilba, seventh Emperor of Rome, A. D. 68. 



THE EARLY CHRISTIANS IN ROME. 219 



CHAPTER XIV. 

THE EARLY CHRISTIANS IN ROME. 

1. They were generally from the humbler 
walks of life. — Tombs usually indicate the 
rank of the persons within them. The sur- 
viving families of the poor cannot adorn 
theirs; but the rich delight to garnish the 
sepulchres of their ancestors. Epitaphs 
usually say all that can be said of tha hon- 
ours of the dead, and crowd the narrow 
space upon the tomb-stone with the titles 
of the departed ; while upon the other class 
of these tablets, and that the most nume- 
rous, there are registered only 

<* The short and simple annals of the poor." 

Almost all the memorials of the dead found 
in the catacombs, indicate that they were 
from the humbler, if not the humblest classes 
of the Roman population. The tombs indi- 
cate no worldly rank, the epitaphs display 
no worldly titles. The name, the age, and 



220 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



especially the Christian faith of the sleeper, 
— ^these are the principal facts recorded, and 
these are recorded with a brevity and sim- 
plicity, like that of the Gospel narratives. 
There are no indications in the catacombs 
of wealth, or superior art, until the time of • 
Constantine and afterward; and unhappily, 
there are evidences there as well as else- 
where, that as soon as these were found in 
the visible church, luxury and pride also 
showed themselves, and the primitive sim- 
plicity of faith and worship gradually de- 
clined. Conformity to the world in outward 
things not only indicated, but encouraged 
inward conformity to the worldly spirit. As 
time advanced, the members of the church 
were richer taen than their predecessors, but 
were much poorer Christians. 

Li these records of the earlier Christians, 
there is none of the inflated style of modern 
eulogies, in their reference to the position 
or the characters of the deceased. K the in- 
scriptions could testify of them, that they 
were the true friends of Christ, they cared 
little for any other title of honour, or ground 
of praise. Their only rank was as members 
of the ch arch of Christ. They were wilhng 



THE EARLY CHRISTIANS IN ROME. 221 



to be accounted servants, and even the ser- 
vants of servants among men, so long as they 
were kings and priests unto God. What 
cared they that the haughty patrician looked 
down upon them with disdain, since they 
were acknowledged by Peter, and John, and 
Paul as brethren, and even called by Christ 
his "friends," his own "peculiar people.'' 
Willing were they to be recorded as only 
poor Fossors, provided they could have the 
name of Christ inscribed upon their tombs ; 
and willing they were to lose their lives for 
the testimony of Jesus, to be buried by 
night, in the obscurest crypt of those sub- 
terranean labyrinths, that they might have 
part in the first resurrection. 

As in the life-time of Paul and of James, 
so for several centuries afterward, " not many 
wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, 
not many noble were called,'' but "God 
chose the poor of this world, rich in faith 
and heirs of the kingdom which he hath 
promised to them that love him." 

2. They were often oppressed and persecuted. 
— The catacombs furnish unquestionable re- 
cords of cases of persecution and martyrdom, 
and probable indications of many others. 

19* 



222 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



It is no new thing to read in the history of 
the martyrs, of what they suftered for Christ 
and how they sufiered, and how many thus 
suffered. We know also who their princi- 
pal persecutors were, and why they perse- 
cuted. These are no new things to us as 
told in history. But it is quite another 
thing to read that fearfully precious word 
martyr^ upon the tomb-stone of a martyr, 
just as it was engraved there by his weep- 
ing, trembling relatives sixteen hundred 
years ago ! 

We have read also of the steadfastness of 
the martyrs under torture, of the calmness 
with which they met death in its most fear- 
ful forms, and how they rejoiced in it for 
Christ's sake and triumphed over it. In the 
Revelation of St. John, we have often read 
of those who came out of great tribulation, 
now standing before the throne clothed in 
white robes, and palms in their hands, the 
emblems of their triumph; and now, upon 
some of these tablets we see the palm-branch, 
just as it was sculptured only a few days or 
weeks after the body of the faithful one was 
brought there, and buried by those who had 
seen him die, and knew that he overcame 



THE EARLY CHRISTIANS IN ROME. 223 



death by the blood of the Lamb. It may 
have been very soon after John wrote that 
sublime description in Patmos, that the stone- 
cutter in Rome chiselled this very symbol, in 
illustration of that passage. 

So, too, we knew ; for history had often told 
us that certain Roman emperors persecuted 
the Christians, and we have felt stirred with- 
in at reading the account of their w^icked- 
ness ; but our heart did not then so burn, 
or our emotions rise so high, as when we 
read upon these rock-books the names of 
Adrian and Antonine, and Decius and Dio- 
cletian as persecutors, and we know that 
these very letters were made by persons 
who had seen these emperors face to face, 
and, perhaps, had seen them standing by 
and assenting unto the death of these very 
martyrs. 

Such records as these are not only deci- 
sive, but very affecting evidences of the 
reality of persecution. They not only con- 
vince the understanding, but they touch the 
heart. They are so fresh and direct from 
the scene of blood, so redolent of trial, so 
full of the spirit of the times where they 
were made, that the soul is greatly to be 



224 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



pitied, that can study them without deep 
and warm emotions. With such testimo- 
nials fresh before us, we cannot consider it 
a small occasion for gratitude, that we live 
in an age and country where we have " free- 
dom to worship God." 

3. In all this they maintained a sweet and 
Christian spirit, — Among all the records of 
the catacombs, there is no indication of an 
angry or complaining spirit, no murmuring 
at their lowly lot, no envying the condition 
of their oppressors, nothing like a spirit of 
revenge or of ill-will toward them; nor is 
there to be found any thing like a secret 
feeling that their Lord was unjust or unkind 
in leaving them to be thus oppressed and 
persecuted. No; if they had been them- 
selves kings and princes, enjoying every 
thing that a bountiful Providence ever gave 
to mortals, their trust in the goodness of 
God and in the love of their Saviour, could 
not have been more perfect ; nor would they 
have said less against their enemies and per- 
secutors, if they had received from them 
only the most equitable or the most merci- 
ful treatment. In this matter, they followed 
in the footsteps of Him, " who, when He was 



THE EARLY CHRISTIANS IN ROME. 225 



reviled, reviled not again; and when He 
suffered, threatened not; but committed 
himself to Him that judgeth righteonsly." 

According to the Divine precept, they 
rendered blessing for railing, they overcame 
evil with good, and showed to their wicked 
and cruel persecutors a more excellent way. 
They seem to have experienced the fulfil- 
ment of what the Saviour had promised to 
his first disciples upon the mount : — " Blessed 
are ye when men shall revile you and per- 
secute you, and shall say all manner of evil 
against you falsely for my sake. Rejoice, 
and be exceedingly glad, for great is your 
reward in heaven." K their epitaphs may 
be taken as an indication of their character 
and spirit, then surely may we say that 
among all the followers of the Lamb, who 
in different ages and in different circum- 
stances have departed this life, none ever 
fell into a sweeter or more peaceful sleep 
upon the Saviour's bosom, than these suffer- 
ing but faithful ones. 

4. The catacombs hear testimony to the sim- 
plicity^ in their religious character^ of the primi- 
tive Christians in Rome. — In worship, they 
had few forms, and these were the simplest 



226 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



possible. There was nothing like formal 
ity in it. They had little opportunity or 
ability for such matters, even if they had 
had the disposition. Their minds were upon 
the grand truths of Christianity and not 
upon unessential circumstances. Hence, they 
laid out their dead in the plainest manner, 
in any convenient or appropriate, place in 
the catacombs ; they took no pains to adorn 
their sleeping-place, but were content with 
the simplest tablet that could preserve the 
name of the departed, and though very 
careful to perpetuate the fact that the sleeper 
was a Christian, they were perfectly content 
to have this fact expressed in the briefest 
and simplest language possible. 

Sometimes, indeed, all words were omit- 
ted, and the tablet bore only some significant 
emblems of his faith. They seemed to desire 
nothing more than to know and to have it 
known that the departed one was faithful to 
his Master even unto death, and then fell 
into the sweet sleep of the Christian. 

Their subterranean chapels were only en- 
largements of some excavation with the cold 
rough stone for its floor and ceiling ; its dark- 
ness but partially dissipated by two or three 



THE EARLY CHRISTIANS IN ROME. 227 



rude lamps suspended trom the walls, and 
the only ornaments around were the tomb- 
stones of the dead or niches in the walls not 
yet occupied. 

Their worship must have been extremely 
plain and simple. It would be very inter- 
esting to us to know what were the hymns 
and the tunes they used in praising God and 
Christ, which the heathen Pliny represents 
as constituting a most important part of their 
services — but we have little to aid us in our 
conjectures as to them. In regard to their 
prayers, we can infer something of their spirit 
and their matter from the prayers which re- 
cent converts from heathenism offer at this 
day, especially when they have lost all things 
but life for Christ, and are in daily expecta- 
tion of death by violence. 

Often, in these subterranean assemblies, 
they had with them an accredited Christian 
teacher, who would discourse to them of the 
whole counsel of God, for their instruction 
and guidance ; but, doubtless, he would under 
their circumstances particularly address them 
as to the manner in which they were to act, 
speak and feel toward^ the heathen who op- 
pressed them, and would encourage them to 



228 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



gentleness and patience by the example of 
their blessed Saviour while on earth ; and, 
doubtless, he often assured them that if they 
should lose their lives for his name's sake, 
they would only have a more excellent reward 
in heaven, and receive it the sooner ; and be 
welcomed by the Saviour, as partakers of his 
sufferings and of his glory. 

If no such teacher were present and no copy 
or fragment of any of the Gospels or Epistles 
was in their possession to be read to them, 
then the intervals between the prayers and 
hymns may have been occupied with rehears- 
ing the truths which they had heard on some 
former occasion; or with recounting the 
sufferings and death, the peace and triumph, 
of their brethren who had suffered in the 
amphitheatre since their last meeting 

Perhaps some Christian stranger from Asia 
Minor had found his way to this "secret 
place of the Most High" and brought to his 
Roman fellow Christians their latest intelli- 
gence from the seven Churches of Asia, and 
perhaps told them something of what he him- 
self or his father had heard at Ephesus, from 
the lips of " that disciple whom Jesus loved.'* 

While we are thus meditating among these 



THE EARLY CHRISTIANS IN ROME. 229 



tombs, we cannot forbear contrasting the 
primitive Christianity of Rome with that 
which is found there at the present time. 
The church in these latter days has gloried 
in the possession and the exercise of worldly 
power. It has untold wealth at its command ; 
it worships in the most gorgeous and costly 
cathedrals. These paragons of architecture 
are adorned with the choicest works of 
ancient and modern art, its formal rites are 
very numerous and imposing, and many of 
them utterly inconsistent with the intent of 
true worship ; charming music lends its at- 
tractions to the service; spurious relics of 
saints and martyrs appeal to the superstition 
of the worshipper ; and, if all these things 
fail to attract, a priesthood thoroughly fur- 
nished for the work and separated by vows 
from every common human interest, stands 
ready to employ any means for accomplish- 
ing their main design of sustaining their 
power over the minds of men. 

These are harsh words, but no others can 
express the sad reality. And all this is within 
sight of the catacombs, and uy the side of the 
Lapidarian gallery wherein are so many evi- 
dences of the simplicity of the early Chris- 

20 



230 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



tians ; all this is over the very spot where they 
claim that the ashes of the noble Peter himself 
repose. Could that faithful apostle awake 
again to life, he would inquire with wonder 
where he was. He would ask in astonish- 
ment why that architectural wonder of the 
world should be named after himself. As 
he looked around upon the splendid adorn- 
ings of the place, and among them recognised 
images placed for adoration which he had 
seen eighteen hundred years before wor- 
shipped in the heathen temples ; as he gazed 
in wonder upon the pompous pageantry that 
attends some of their religious festivals, and 
saw how all the honors of the occasion 
seemed to be given to the pope, and how 
much more was said and thought of St. Peter 
than of St. Peter's Saviour, methinks he 
would exclaim in agony of soul: ^'They 
have taken away my Lord, and I know not 
where they have laid Him !'* 

There is hardly one point of resemblance 
betAveen the primitive and the modern church 
of Rome. Among all the genuine relics of 
the primitive church taken from the cata- 
combs which they preserve with jealous care 
and with a regard bordering upon religious 



THE EARLY CHRISTIANS IN ROME. 231 



veneration, there is hardly one which does 
not prove that the modern church has not 
only degenerated from the simplicity and 
piety of the primitive church, but has so far 
departed from that standard as to hold but 
a doubtful claim to the rights of a church of 
Cnrist. If it is Christian, it is but little 
better than apostate Christianity. It has 
lost not only the spirit and the power, but 
even the form of the original. 

May the Great Head of the church ere long 
recover it to its primitive purity, simplicity 
and spirituality, that it may be worthy of 
the Apostle whom it claims as its founder, 
and worthy of the other Apostle who had 
much more agency and influence than Peter 
in its early history ; and most of all, that it 
may be confirmed to the will of the Great 
Head of the Christian church: "who loved 
it, and gave Himself for it, that He might 
sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of 
water by the word ; — that He might present 
it to Himself a glorious church, not having 
spot or wrinkle or any such thing ; but that 
it should be holy and without blemish." 

From all the foregoing, we may infer that 
goodness is the only true greatness, and 



232 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



piety the only permanent honour. In other 
words, that which God approves, and only 
that, is truly good and great and honourable. 
That alone will enjoy ?i permanent prosperity. 
What changes Divine providence has 
wrought ! " He setteth up one and casteth 
down another." At his word the mountain 
Cometh to nought, and the small stone be- 
comes a great mountain and fills the whole 
earth. The old paganism of Rome, en- 
throned in power and pride, apparently se- 
cure of an eternal dominion, has long been 
'cast down to the ground, while Christianity, 
which was then only as a weak infant, now 
rules among the rulers of the world. The 
vestiges that now remain of the grandeur 
of that stupendous pagan power, only serve 
to illustrate the histoiy of things that have 
passed away ; while Christianity, which re- 
ceived hardly any thing more than a passing 
sneer fi'om the Roman pagan historians, has 
now spread its name and influence through 
lands of which the old Roman never dreamed. 
At God's bidding, the vitality departed from 
the spreading tree of the Roman empire, 
and passed into Christianity, the young 
plant which grew under its shadow. '^ God 



THE EARLY CHRISTIANS IN ROME. 233 



hath chosen the foolish things of the world 
to confound the wise ; and God hath chosen 
the weak things of the world to confound 
the things which are mighty; and base 
things of the world, and things which are 
despised, hath God chosen, yea and things 
which are not, to bring to nought things 
that are, that no flesh should glory in his 
presence." 

We should then guard against judging too 
much by present appearances. We should 
the rather judge righteous judgment, — as 
God judges. Again we say, that is great 
which is permanently so, and that is good 
which God approves; and whatever God 
approves as great and good, will ultimately 
prosper, however feeble and unpromising it 
may at any time seem to man. 

If, under the most unfavourable circum- 
stances, the vine which God planted in 
Rome, survived the wounds of the axe, and 
the violence of fire, took deep root, and 
spread so that its glory filled the land, and 
is filling the whole world, then Christianity 
will prosper wherever God calls upon his 
people to plant it. He will nourish it, and 
therefore it must thrive. If that stupendous 

20* 



234 THE CATACOMBS OF KOME. 



heathen power, with all its vast resources of 
wealth, and strength, and numbers, and 
malignity, was unable to crush the life out 
of Christianity while it was yet in its in- 
fancy, then the gates of hell shall never pre- 
vail against the church of Christ ; no weapon 
formed against it shall prosper, and all they 
are evermore safe who abide. under the sha- 
dow of the Almighty. 

Moreover, if Christianity made conquest 
of Rome with so little aid of human learn- 
ing, and with no aid of worldly power, with- 
out the patronage of the world's mighty 
ones, and independent of the world's policy 
and cunning, then it may, in all its future 
operations upon a wicked world, rely for 
success upon those elements of simplicity, 
honesty, purity and love which characterized 
the piety and the labours of the primitive 
Koman Christians. In other words, to learn 
the best method of propagating Christianity 
and of converting the world, we should study 
the catacombs rather than St. Peter's. 

How wonderful and how instructive are 
the providences of God with the righteous 
and the wicked! While Christianity was 
thus entering Rome and the Roman empire, 



THE EARLY CHRISTIANS IN ROME. 235 



Pompeii was suddenly buried, and, as it 
were, hermetically sealed up in lava to be 
preserved for later times, as a specimen of 
what that heathenism was, with which 
Christianity had to struggle. Soon after- 
ward, the Christians of Rome began to be 
interred in the catacombs as we have already 
related ; and they, too, were ere long shut up 
as if for preservation, that coming times 
might see with their own eyes what primi- 
tive piety was, and admire the grace of God 
which could mould such lovely characters 
out of the corrupt materials of Roman pa- 
ganism. 

Now, with what different emotions are 
these two classes of ancient Romans ex- 
humed ! Every relic from Pompeii which 
indicates the moral character of its inhabi- 
tants 'at all, excites only loathing or abhor- 
rence. A few only of these relics are quite 
sufficient to satisfy any one that these an- 
cient pagans may have sat for the awful pic- 
ture of heathenism which inspiration has 
drawn, in the first chapter of the epistle to 
the Romans. While on the other hand, not 
a Christian relic, or symbol, or word has 
been found in all the catacombs, which does 



236 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



not indicate the utmost purity of charactei ; 
not one allusion which a virtuous and Chris- 
tian mind may not dwell upon with pleasure. 
No stain is left where any follower of the 
Lamb perished. Christians died not as the 
fool dieth. 

Standing between Pompeii and the cata- 
combs to-day, it is not difficult to admit that, 
in the judgment of God, and even in the es- 
timation of all reasoning men, one of those 
true Christians of the catacombs was of 
more worth than all the corrupt dwellers in 
Pompeii ; and that the least in the kingdom 
of heaven to-day is, in truth, greater than all 
the ancient heathen Romans. Once more, 
then, do we say that that only is truly great 
and goody which is permanently so^ and they 
only are truly blessed whom God approves. 

What a scene of astonishment would the 
resurrection be to the old inhabitants of this 
historical neighbourhood, if the trumpet of 
God should now sound. The pagan Ro- 
mans would arise to find their glory de- 
parted, their proudest works crumbled, the 
temples and images of their gods demolished, 
and their names forgotten. They inquire 
for "the eternal city," as it was, and tbey 



THE EARLY CHRISTIANS IN ROME. 237 



are pointed to a few indistinct mounds of 
dust and ruined monuments, as all that sur- 
vives of them. They call upon Jupiter for 
help, upon Mars also, and Apollo, upon 
Venus, and Juno, and Minerva, but " there 
is no voice, nor any that answereth.'' Then 
they ask what this new powei* is, which they 
see as the life-giving element in all the ruling 
powers of the earth. The answer of God is : 
"This is the branch of my planting, the 
work of my hands that I may be glorified. 
A little one has become a thousand, and a 
small one, a strong nation. I the Lord 
hasten it in his time.'' 

Remembering how they lifted up the 
sword against the Lord and against his 
Christ, and against the lives of his saints, 
they are seized with consternation, and they 
say to the mountains and rocks, "Fall on 
us, and hide us from the face of Him that 
sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of 
the Lamb ; for the great day of his wrath is 
come, and who shall be able to stand.'' 

With the followers of the Lamb who 
come up from their sleep in the catacombs, 
the surprise is equally great, but attended 
with very different emotions. They awake 



238 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



to find their brightest hopes far exceeded by 
the glorious reality. The time of their de- 
liverance and triumph has come. Their 
despised Redeemer appears as King of kings 
and Lord of lords. They lift up their heads 
and shout, for their redemption draweth nigh. 
" Happy is the people that is in such a case ; 
*yea, happy is that people, whose God is the 
Lord." 

Happier far the poor Christian Fossor than 
the pagan Caesar. 



The subject of our volume has carried us 
back in our thoughts to an intimate commu- 
nion with "the glorious company of the 
apostles,'' "the noble army of martyrs," 
and "the goodly fellowship" of their dis- 
ciples and brethren, who received the same 
truth, and died in the like precious faith. 
Let our thoughts, as we close this volume, 
go forward to the day when "all that sleep 
in Jesus, tv^U God bring with him. Oh that 
illustrious day, when I shall join that divine 
assembly of souls !" So exclaimed the great 
Roman orator, at the thought of meeting 
after death, the departed great of his own 



THE EARLY CHRISTIANS IN ROME. 239 



country. If the reader's heart has been im- 
pressed, as ours, with the purity, gentleness, 
cheerful patience, and never-failing charity 
of the early Christians, among whose tombs 
we have been wandering, he has earnestly 
wished, that he may be counted worthy to 
stand with them "at the resurrection of the 
just." Blessed beyond all earthly bliss, are 
they who can look forward with a sure hope 
of this eternal fellowship with all the good. 
Unto that fellowship, our own kindred and 
friends who have fallen asleep in Christ, are 
already gathered. " Oh that illustrioas day, 
when we shall join that divine assembly of 
souls 1" 

"Kthe mere conception of the reunion of 
good men in a future state, infused a mo- 
mentary rapture into the mind of TuUy ; if 
an airy speculation, (for there is reason to 
fear it had little hold on his convictions,) 
could inspire him with such delight, what 
may we be expected to feel, who are assured 
of such an event by the true sayings of God ! 
How should we rejoice in the prospect, the 
certainty, rather, of spending a blissful eter- 
nity with those whom we loved on earth ; 
of seeing them emerge from the ruins of the 



240 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



tomb, and the deeper ruins of the fall, not 
only uninjured, but refined and perfected, 
with every tear wiped from their eyes, stand- 
ing before the throne of God and the Lamb 
in white robes, and palms in their hands, 
crying mth a loud voice. Salvation to God 
who sitteth upon the throne, and to the Lord 
forever and ever ! What delight T^dll it af- 
ford to renew the sweet counsel we have 
taken together, to recount the toils of com- 
bat, and the labour of the way, and to ap- 
proach not the house but the throne of God, 
in company, in order to join in the sympho- 
nies of heavenly voices, and lose ourselves 
among the splendours and fruitions of the 
beatific vision ! 

" To that state all the pious on earth are 
tending ; and if there is a law from whose 
operation none are exempt, which irresistibly 
conveys their bodies to darkness and to dust, 
there is another, not less certain or less 
powerful, which conducts their spirits to the 
abodes of bliss, to the bosom of their Father 
and their God. The wheels of Nature are 
not made to roll backward; every thing 
presses on toward eternity ; from the birth 
of time an impetuous current has set in, 



THE EARLY CHRISTIANS IN ROME. 241 



which bears all the sons of men toward that 
interminable ocean. Meanwhile, heaven is 
attracting to itself whatever is congenial to 
its nature, is enriching itself by the spoils of 
earth, and collecting within its capacious 
bosom whatever is pure, permanent, and 
divine ; leaving nothing for the last J&re to 
consume but the objects of the slaves of con- 
cupiscence ; while every thing which grace 
has prepared and beautified, shall be ga- 
thered and selected from the ruins of the 
world, to adorn that eternal city, "which 
hath no need of the sun, neither of the 
moon, to shine in it ; for the glory of God 
doth enlighten it, and the Lamb is the light 
thereof." 




Titus, eleventh Emperor of Home. 
21 



APPENDIX. 



As an appropriate appendix to this volume, we 
add a few paragraphs from "J. Visit to Europe*^ 
just published, by our distinguished countryman, 
Professor Silliman, of Yale College. Our extracts 
are from the first volume, (pp. 321 and 329.) 

In connection with his visit to Rome, Professor 
Silliman says : — , 

The Gallery of Ancient Sepulchral Monu- 
ments is extremely interesting. It is a long avenue 
within the walls of the Vatican, and is filled entirely 
with the records of the dead — the dead of centuries 
long past. From the tombs on the Appian Way, 
and from the sepulchres of the early Christians, a 
vast collection has been formed of ancient monu- 
mental inscriptions and devices, sculptured chiefly 
in marble, and often very rudely. On the left side 
of the gallery, in the direction in which you are 
conducted through it, are seen the inscriptions for 

the early Christians ; on the right, those of the Pa- 

243 



244 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



gans. There are more than 3000 of these monu- 
mental stones. They are merely marble tablets, 
frequently of irregular form, and attached to the 
walls ; occasionally, they are in the form of distinct 
busts, and more rarely of sarcophagi. The inscrip- 
tions on the Pagan monuments are not wanting in 
tenderness, but they are without that hope which 
cheers the Christian — a frequent termination on the 
monuments of the latter is ^^ in pace." The Pagan- 
inscriptions are classified according to their profes- 
sion, origin and rank — ^from slaves and servants to 
deified heroes, emperors and empresses. All the 
numerous servants and officers of Caesar's household 
form one division, magistrates another, citizens an- 
other, and so on. When we are amoDg them, we 
feel that we are conversing with the ancient dead, 
and the eflfect on the mind is that of pensive and 
profitable contemplation. 

Church of St. Sebastian, and the Cata- 
combs. — This church is without the walls, and it is 
named from the martyr, St. Sebastian, whose lace- 
rated statue reposes before us pierced with arrows, 
thus illustrating the manner in which he was mur- 
dered. 



APPENDIX. 246 



This is a small church, but it is rendered pain- 
iully interesting by the catacombs, the opening into 
which is beneath the building. They are called 
the Catacombs of St. Calisto, or Calixtus. It is be- 
lieved that these catacombs were originally exca- 
vated by the Romans, to obtain puzzolana. They 
are winding, intricate passages, real labyrinths, 
formed not only in branches, but in stories, of which 
there are three. They are continued underground, 
as is said, twenty miles to Ostia, the port of Kome 
at the mouth of the Tiber in one direction, and to 
Albano, twelve miles in another. In some places 
the excavations are in large chambers, which the 
traveller views with intense interest, as it is an un- 
doubted fact that these gloomy recesses afforded an 
asylum to the ancient Christians for their derided 
and forbidden worship. Here they sympathized, 
and here they praised God, and prayed to him for 
protection against their cruel persecutors ; resorting, 
as is said, in disguise, to the city in the day, and 
assembling here at night, for safety and worship. 
Some of these subterranean cavities seem to have 
been fitted up to a certain degree as chapels, and 
portions of stucco are found adhering to the walls. 

The oldest portrait of our Saviour was found in one 

21^ 



246 THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. 



of these subterranean chambers, as is supposed, and 
dates back tn the third century. 

Here also the early Christians found a refuge for 
their dead, and thousands were interred here in holy 
secrecy. As we wandered in these ancient solitudes, 
it was impossible to suppress strong emotions (and 
who would wish to do it ?) when we saw the empty 
graves dug into the sides of the caverns and gal- 
leries. It was easy to tell which way the body lay, 
as there was a place hollowed out for the head, for 
they appeared to have been buried generally without 
coffins, the indurated puzzolana forming a sufficient 
sarcophagus, and it was rare that any other was pro- 
vided. The tomb was often closed by a marble slab 
with an inscription. 

There were niches in the walls, which appear to 
have been intended for lamps. 

Many of the marbles with inscriptions, which we 
saw in the Vatican, were taken from these graves, 
and along with them many of those interesting per- 
sonal relics that have been already mentioned. 
Some of the graves have never been opened — the 
marble door is closed even with the side wall, and 
appears undisturbed. 

We had a monk for our guide ; — he bore a light, 



^ 



APPENDIX. 24'i 



while each of us was furnished with a uandle, and 
thus we followed him in his devious wanderings. 
We, however, became willing to return before we 
had strayed too far ; for so numerous were the rami- 
fications of these wonderful labyrinths that it seemed 
very possible to lose our way, although under the 
guidance of one who was familiar with the intricate 
windings of this mysterious cemetery. This feeling 
was not diminished when a door was pointed out to 
us — a door now closed and sealed — through which, 
no longer ago than 1837, a schoolmaster entered 
with ten or twelve of his scholars, and all were 
lost ; neither he nor his confiding pupils were ever 
heard of again ; they perished by a most miserable 
death, entombed alive, and their bodies were added 
to those which these catacombs still contain. 




CGT 20 \947. 



